Posted by Jay Livingston
My doctor poked and prodded, told me there was probably nothing to worry about but wrote prescriptions for couple of additional tests. The whole thing took a good 15 minutes.
At the checkout counter, they told me that I owed $425. I don’t know how much of that I’ll get back from the insurance company.
That same day, the Commonwealth Fund posted an update of its comparisons of healthcare quality and costs in seven countries. As in previous years, the US finished last on the overall rankings and in several of the subcategories. As for cost, literally the bottom line, we’re Number One.
(Click on the image for a larger view.)The Netherlands won this healthcare world cup. And as Erik Voeten at The Monkey Cage writes, it’s not just about insurance. He was in the Netherlands, where, as a visitor, he had no insurance.
Last summer, I had to bring my daughter to a Dutch doctor. Not only did I succeed in seeing someone that same morning but the cost [was] less than my regular co-payment in the USA, even though I have no insurance in the Netherlands and had never seen that doctor before.House calls. Does anyone out there in the US remember house calls?
The key is that the Dutch have an extensive system of family doctors, who generally operate a practice from their homes with minimal administrative assistance. These family doctors provide basic health care, do house visits, and are the gatekeepers for (more expensive) specialized care.
2 comments:
With family and friends in Amsterdam, I hear many stories about good Dutch health care.
My own experiences with Dutch doctors are likewise positive. Foreigners are not entitled to free health care. But I've seen doctors and picked up drugs (the prescription kind) and the pharmacist always gasps when I say I don't have insurance. Then she takes a minute to figure out the cost (it takes a minute because I think she rarely has to do so).
It almost always comes out to less than I pay here. And I have good insurance (of course the same is also true in Mexico).
You can see a doctor on Holland with hardly any wait, they're calm, have all the time in the world, and the bill is always very reasonable.
My friends who have stayed in hospitals say the treatment and service and attitude is much more pleasant than you find here. If you're in the system, you pay almost nothing. Those not in the system get a bill at the end... but again, it's reasonable. A few hundred dollars a day for everything. Not thousands.
The difference, I suppose, is here taxpayer money goes right to the profits of private drug companies and insurance companies. There the taxpayer money actually goes to health care. Somehow, some people see that as distinction between capitalism and socialism.
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