That would be Britain's conservative prime minister. Funny, but I'm not hearing much "envy of the world" in his comments. LA Times:
Ask a Briton to describe “American-style” healthcare, and you’ll hear a catalog of horrors that include grossly expensive and unnecessary medical procedures and a privatized system that favors the rich. For a people accustomed to free healthcare for all, regardless of income, the fact that millions of their cousins across the Atlantic have no insurance and can’t afford decent treatment is a farce as well as a tragedy.
So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice.Krugman links to an earlier Giuliani comment about how if Democrats won the 2008 presidential election, American health care might become like France!
“We will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be moving towards an insurance scheme, we will not introduce an American-style private system,” Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically told a group of healthcare workers in a nationally televised address last week.
In case they didn’t hear it the first time, Cameron repeated the dreaded “A”-word in a list of five guarantees he offered the British people at the end of his speech.
We can only wish.
In France, visits to the emergency room cost around 27 euros a pop (around 40 bucks), whereas in the US the average ER visit costs $1000. Doctor visits in France are set at around 22 or 23 euros ($32 or $33). My chest x-ray a few years back, which I was warned was going to be "really expensive," was around 45 euros or $65. And expensive surgery, like my retinal detachment surgery, which would have cost $20,000+ in the US, came to a whopping 1600 euros ($2300) in France. But, you're wondering, are there long waits? Not for the emergency room - I waited between 20 minutes and 3 hours, just like in the US. For my retina surgery I had to wait 3 days because my doctor was busy doing other surgeries until then. For the chest x-ray, I just called them and walked right over - I waited a whopping 1 minute in the office, got the x-ray, and within 20 minutes the doc had already consulted with me about my results and I was done.
But the quality of care? Our medical system is better right? Well, my American specialist was so impressed by the job the French did on my eye, he asked, "who did your surgery, this is amazing!" - not knowing I had it done in France.
We're number one.
