Over the last few days, I have been watching some videos on YouTube showing Americans who live in Europe explaining the cultural differences between their home and adopted countries. One of the most common and striking things is how often health care is mentioned. Americans seem to arrive here oblivious of the publicly funded systems used in Europe compared to the private model they are familiar with in the USA.
You can see some videos here and here but you can also find plenty of others.
There is a great video setting out how Germany manages health care, spends much less overall and achieves far better outcomes and higher life expectancy than the US.
Americans in Europe are all absolutely terrified of visiting a doctor, going to a hospital or even calling an ambulance - because of the horrendous costs which they think they're going to be burdened with. They wait until things are really, really bad before calling. It's a last resort, something to be avoided if at all possible.
In the USA, an ambulance costs $1500 minimum and a visit to a doctor costs hundreds of dollars. You are billed for everything and anything. Having a baby - even a normal birth - costs about $11,000. All paid for out of insurance - if you have it and if the procedures you need are not excluded. About 9% of US citizens are not insured. Every year half a million Americans go bankrupt over medical bills.
So, you can imagine how surprised and pleased they are to find serious amounts of health care either cost nothing at the point of need or very little - a few euros at most. They all agree that the US health care system is utterly broken.
And it isn't just Europe. An American visitor in Costa Rica was shocked to be charged £20 for a vial of insulin that cost her $320 at home.
And yet, despite this experience the UK government increasingly looks westward to America for solutions to our own funding and capacity issues in the NHS. I confess I used to think there might be things we could learn from the US model, that perhaps a wholly publicly funded system might not be the best, but over the past few years I think it's simply that we don't provide enough money.
In Europe, they don't seem to treat health care as a political football as we do. The Tories want to privatise as much as they can, often using American companies or methods, while Labour prefer a wholly publicly funded system.
Many years ago, I worked for a company that offered workers BUPA private healthcare but when I looked at the fine print it seemed like a lottery in what was and wasn't covered and I never took it up although plenty of others did. Fortunately, I never needed anything serious anyway and I haven'y visited a doctor for at least ten years. If I was in the US I would constantly be worrying that we didn't have enough insurance.
Universal healthcare is a no-brainer in my opinion and we should all be worried about losing it.
