Robin Hanson Has a Brilliant Idea
Do you think that other countries have better health care systems than ours? A lot of people apparently do. And representatives of other countries make the same claim. So why isn’t this an opportunity for a mutually beneficial exchange? Let the other countries offer home grown care right in their own U.S. embassies and consulates and let Americans sign up for foreign health care (better care at half the price, so we are told). As Hanson explains:
Let countries like Sweden, France, etc. with approved national health care systems have bigger consulates, and open them up to paying customers for medical services. For example, you could sign up for Swedish Care, and when needed you’d go to their consulate to get medical care as if you were living in Sweden…
We don’t issue travel warnings suggesting people not travel to Sweden, for fear of getting sick there. So why not let folks travel to a Sweden nearby for their medical care?
Full Robin Hanson’s post at the Overcoming Bias blog.
For some countries, lower labor costs, drugs @ controlled prices and no malpractice/liability insurance costs might allow them to make a profit with lower prices than American providers charge. Other than those three things, I don’t see how they could charge less — unless they provide less care per procedure (fewer tests, etc.)like they do at home.
Americans are not rushing to Canada or Britain to get medical care. There is a reason.
I don’t have a problem with the notion of Sweden providing medical care as a service out of its embassy. However, if it decides to do so, I would suggest it clear out some space by getting rid of that Volvo truck engine that’s displayed on an engine stand in the main lobby of its embassy in Washington.
I like this idea.
I’m guessing you are joking of course, since it would be a 48 hour ambulance ride with no stops for most US residents. But it’s pretty clear that the US pays much more and gets a bit less in the end when compared to other rich countries.
I agree with Ann – healthcare in Canada isn’t as good now days, since the better doctors have headed south, looking to make a profit.
This makes no sense, I guess it’s a joke. The other problem is that people continue to assume all universal healthcare systems are single-payer like Britain and Canada. Other countries have a diversity of universal systems, all of them cost about 50% of the US system per capita normalized to GDP while covering 100% of citizens. These systems range from health savings accounts plus universal government catastrophe insurance (Singapore), mixed public and private hospitals with government subsidization of private insurance (Australia), government as the primary insurer based on flat tax (Japan), government as the insurer with subsidization and private hospitals and medical practices (France), work-based insurance sickness funds (Germany), tightly regulated universal private insurance with subsidization for the poor (Netherlands), Single payer with government administration at every level (UK, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden).
It’s so easy to demonize universal healthcare and point to Britain and Canada, but they’re really the minority. They have underfunded single payer systems that have generated access problems. Their issues with technology, like MRI and CT access, is separate from the fact that they’re single-payer, more that they’re just mismanaged. Sweden, also single payer, has no such access issues (guaranteed access to physician within 3 days by law), because they pay more at 9% of GDP.
Other systems, that are mixed public-private systems, do not have similar access issues at least as studied by the McKinsey report. All of them perform better, if anything, at access, wait times, outcomes and cost than the US system.