Universal Healthcare Around the World:
Italy: average wait for a mammogram is 70 days
“When you compare the outcomes for specific
diseases, the United States clearly outperforms
the rest of the world. Whether the disease
is cancer, pneumonia, heart disease, or
AIDS, the chances of a patient surviving are far
higher in the United States than in other countries.
The same is true for prescription drugs.
For example, 44 percent of Americans who
could benefit from statins, lipid-lowering
medication that reduces cholesterol and protects
against heart disease, take the drug.
That number seems low until compared with
the 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of
Britons, and 17 percent of Italians who could
both benefit from the drug and receive it.”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-613.pdf
In Great Britain, about 20% of patients with treatable colon cancer at the time of discovery are considered incurable by the time treatment is finally available.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-613.pdf
Countries in which complementary or supplementary private health insurance policies are common include
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States (in
the case of Medicare programme beneficiaries).
In countries where private health insurance is available, governments often impose rules on what sort of
coverage is permissible. For example, Australia prohibits private insurance policies from covering the
ambulatory care co-payments required in the public programme. Canada prohibits private health insurers
from covering benefits included in the national plan.
The
public-integrated model combines on-budget financing of health-care provision with hospital
providers that are part of the government sector.6 These systems, which merge the insurance and provision
functions, are organised and operated like any government department. Staff is generally paid on salary
(although, in some cases, doctors can have private patients as well) and they are most often public-sector
employees. Ambulatory doctors and other health-care professionals can be either public employees or
private contractors to the health-care authority, with a range of remuneration packages. Ensuring complete
population coverage is particularly easy under such systems, and as they are under the control of the
budget, the growth of overall costs has been contained more easily. However, they have weak incentives to
increase output, improve efficiency, or maintain quality and responsiveness to patient needs.
