In Europe, Sanders Would Be Center-Right {more about health care than the primary} (Bloomberg)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Leonid Bershidsky

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Sanders retorted:

I voted for it, but right now, what we have to deal with is the fact that 29 million people still have no health insurance.

For Europeans, that staggering fact is impossible to understand. There are debates there about national health care systems, but not this one. All the big economies there have universal health-care systems under which everyone is insured. Even the most conservative politicians support them.
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Prescription drugs, for example, are far more expensive in the U.S. than in Europe, and the most important reason for that is that European countries regulate them and force pharmaceutical companies to accept thinner margins, and the U.S. doesn't. European governments don't give much credence to big pharma's argument that higher prices help consumers by paying for more research and development: These companies spend more on marketing than they do on R&D, and big European drugmakers haven't given up on research because they are more tightly regulated in their home markets.

European governments have also carved out a smaller niche in the health industry for private insurance companies: serving those who want premium care. It makes sense: The profits are made from people who are willing and able to pay more.
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Sure, his approach is not as business-friendly as the current U.S. policies that Clinton wants to change only incrementally. But in Europe there’s nothing remotely radical-sounding about Sanders’s ideas because Germany, the U.K. and Spain, among others, provide certain basic services to their residents on roughly the same amount of per-capita tax dollars that the U.S. collects.

Europeans often complain about the quality of their comprehensive health care. Yet the residents of Europeans countries are generally in better health.
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more: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-19/in-europe-sanders-would-be-center-right

[w0nderer]

1. I complained a lot about Swedish health care

and Danish and UK when I loved in those places

that was until I tried US health care and the lack of it often forced on people.

Now I saw how lucky I was.

Until the US I never had to
skip treatment or health evaluation because I couldn't afford it
skip medication for same reason
tell people not to call an ambulance after being hit by a car, it'd be too expensive
wait more than 6 months for any procedure
have to worry that the $20 i paid at the counter and 'pre approved' would be over turned and i'd get a surprise bill of $3500 or more later
not update glasses cause it's not covered in my normal 'health'
not check teeth cause it's not covered in normal 'health'


so yeah, I was lucky, and now i don't complain about those Healthcare systems, instead i work to change the healthcare here to more closely resemble them

[bananas]

2. k&r nt