I am a major fan of the French health system. I had brain surgery here at one of the best hospitals in Europe, and the only bill I ever saw was for using the telephone. French doctors love me. “What? You only get 23 Euros for an appointment? You deserve more than that!” They don’t get to hear that very often. In fact, there are French people who complain that 23 Euros is too much. Never mind that those 23 Euros are reimbursed by Social Security, so they don’t even really pay anything. True, there are plenty of specialists who cost a lot more, and not all of their fees are covered. But most employers offer supplemental health insurance, so in the end, almost everything is covered. Even when it’s not, it’s a fraction of what it would cost in the US. Naturally, the system is outrageously expensive for the government, so there is constant talk of reform and then shrieks of horror from those same French people who were complaining (grumbling is sort of a national pastime here). So things change at a snail’s pace, and at every tiny change, people start to say that now France is on the slippery slope and soon the health system will be like that in America. When this happens, I say “relax, you have no idea how much your system will have to change to reach that point…”

That said, the current proposed reforms regarding hospitals make my hair stand on end. I keep thinking about what happened to American hospitals a decade or so ago when our brilliant bureaucrats decided that it would be just too cool to run the public hospitals like for-profit businesses. I believe that was the beginning of the end, or perhaps the beginning of a new era of hospitals that have so little regard for patients that you don’t dare stay in one without an advocate (family or friend) to fend for you.

>more