For those who want America to have a health care system that is just like what they have in France, the Guardian has a sobering analysis. The French socialized health care system is in trouble. It is about to collapse. Patient care is suffering. Doctors are on strike. Some are threatening to resign.
The Guardian has the story:
More than 600 French hospital doctors have threatened to resign if the government does not increase health funding, as striking medics prepare to take to the streets this week across the country.
The doctors warn that budget cuts, bed closures and staff shortages are bringing France’s health system to the brink of collapse and putting patients’ lives at risk.
“Public hospitals in France are dying,” wrote 660 medics from hospitals all over France in an unprecedented open letter, saying funding cuts were threatening patient safety in what was once seen as one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
Doctors are calling for urgent government talks after nine months of hospital strikes, which began in March in emergency rooms and have since spread across departments from paediatrics to psychiatry, with junior doctors joining this month and no end in sight.
And yet, no one asks whether France can still afford socialized medicine. The system has run out of money because the nation does not have the money. Thus, health care in declining:
In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked France’s health system the best of 191 countries. But a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, published in the Lancet medical journal in 2017, placed it in 15th place for quality of care.
The general public supports the strikes. But most people are not optimistic about the future:
Some 87% of French people support the hospital strikes, according to ViaVoice pollsters, with the public deeply concerned about protecting universal healthcare as a pillar of the social system. Over 90% of people trust healthcare staff to do their best with limited resources. But crucially, 73% are pessimistic about the future for healthcare.
The problem is quite simple. The socialist scheme has, in the immortal words of Margaret Thatcher, run out of other peoples’ money. If your overly regulated economy does not produce wealth, there will not be any money to fund grandiose social programs.
In any event, those who wish to model America on what they see in France should have a rethink.
The Germans gave us energiewende and that has not made any difference to our planning whatsoever. Germany just did what we are planning to do and failed spectacularly. It is a case-study in green stupidity by a much better organized culture with an army of top-tier engineers and it is a disaster, so imagine how this plays out in New York? People freezing to death and the government blaming the utilities with the full complicity of our garbage media is how.
ReplyDeleteSo why should we learn from the French model of failed medicine?
I guess in a planned economy, the only way to get your slice of the shrinking pie is to go on public strike. Next up, the farmers, then the fisherman, then the truck drivers, then the school teachers, etc, etc.
It was recently announced that NY State was facing a $6.1 billion budget deficit, almost all of which accounted for by "unexpected" Medicare costs. So naturally the reaction was Gov. Cuomo proposing to cut Medicare fees paid to providers, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie calling for higher taxes.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that was only ONE aspect of the deficit, the other being the stampede of high income earners from the state--especially now that the federal state and local tax deduction is limited to $10K.
Like Donald Trump, we maintain residences in NY and FL, and like him, we're going to cut our losses as well.