Those Socialists Are Onto Something
March 1st, 2010
Just got back from the doctors’ this morning. One is helping me with a back problem, the other is my GP who is currently helping me with ocular migraines. Both required an MRI, so I had two taken this morning–one of my back, and one of my head. After meeting with the back doctor (the other I consult in about a week), I picked up my prescription for the medicine helping with my herniated disc. Took all of two hours for the whole thing.
Total cost: about $135 for two MRI’s, a doctor’s consult, and a month’s worth of medication. The medication is working, BTW, just like it did last time–helps with the pain while I recover.
Socialist health care is actually quite good.
That’s probably with the 30% copay so the total bill was $400.
That’s the efficiency of having the government be single-payer. Insurance overhead is minimal, both for the provider and the system as a whole.
The government also sets price limits so margins are very thin, which is what they should be of course.
From my reading apparently the price controls and fixed staff salaries also drives doctors out of hospital practice into boutique practices where they can make money on volume.
The Japanese system does benefit by the mandatory aspect, workers generally contribute 8% of their wages as premiums.
This is twice what I’m paying for my PPO plan ($220/mo) that has a $1700/yr deductible.
If we get reform here my insurance provider will lose the ability to refuse preexisting conditions and my premiums will go up a lot I guess.
Recission and preexisting conditions is BS so I welcome reform and I do wish we’d go single-payer like Japan and Canada.
In Korea I pay about $45 a month and my employer pays about $45 a month. If I go to a Korean doctor it cost me $2 a visit. If I go to the American doctor at Severence hospital they hit me up for $35. Last time I had insurance in the U.S. I think I had to cough up $28 on a doctor’s visit – that’s on top of the $450 my employer paid and the $50 I paid a month for the premium.
The American system is insane.
If America adopted France’s gold plated system tomorrow, government outlays for health care would go down!… and in theory everyone would get a tax break. (so implies several OECD studies).
On top of that, the $400-$600 a month insurance premiums could be monitized and rolled into people’s pay check.
In short, if the United States adopted France’s gold plated system, American’s agregated purchasing power would increase, and with it agregate demand, and as a result, America would be out of the 2nd Great Depression in a fortnight.
That using France’s gold plated system.
At 8% of GNP Japan has the second most efficient system in the world. Taiwan, at 6% of GNP has the most efficient. The Taiwanese modeled their system on Japan, then implemented some added efficiencies (one national insurance company, instead of many).
America’s insurance system isn’t just killing Americans, it’s killing their economy too.
This is just one of many reasons I will never return to the live in the USA. I do feel sorry for my friends and family that live there but i wont return to join them. Japan has many many problems and imperfections and in truth, the future looks rather bleak without some serious discussion of the many ills in this country. But when it comes to health care this country is where i want to be.