It's interesting, the Frontline piece last night covered several nations that have private insurance but DO NOT allow profit, and they apparently still compete with each other on other criteria, like speed of claim paying, etc. Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and if memory serves me correctly, Taiwan do this. Reid interviewed the head of one of the Swiss firms, who said administrative overhead was about 5%, instead of 20%+ here. It looks like one way this all works abroad is that doctors make less, and it was mentioned that hospitals are getting squeezed because in nations like Japan a semi-private room is 'ten bucks a night', private is 'ninety bucks a night', about the cost of an aspirin here. Nobody goes bankrupt. I can live with that and a radiologist making 250k instead of 500k. Also, I believe they mentioned debt is less of a factor in medical eduacation as it is subsidized in Germany.
John |
