Yes. This is the point
@sb247 was making with the whole apples to oranges argument. The patient populations are completely different. People in those countries have far more self respect, resulting in a healthier gen pop. They also don't manufacture drugs, or pay the prices we do or conduct as much research. They essentially mooch off the healthcare exports of other nations. Their system works as a product of their environment, not the other way around.
(Painful laughter) Have you met Germans before? Or even better, the Scottish? Healthier general pop, no, especially the Scottish. No, the difference is what their societies are willing to tolerate in terms of government interference. The Americans do not tolerate high amounts of government intervention as a general matter. Germany is not the same sort of socialized medicine, they basically have ACA on steroids, without some of the ludicrous loopholes that ACA has and it works as a measure of expenditures on health. Germany and even France does more per capita healthcare research than even the US both on the state and non-state funding, the US just outweighs them in total dollars, and Australia and Israel outdoes all of those preceding three by a considerable margin.
The right/non-right of healthcare is rarely if ever an explicitly debated item. The finance of it is, and the way it is right now, no one knows how the payment channels work. Most physicians have no idea of how CMS rules their lives (even with private insurance) and most pharmacists have no idea of NCPDP even though that makes our business go round.
From the policy angle, I could fairly easily design a non-involved government health care system as well as a complete government health system (the closest thing to that being the Finnish and Swedish systems). I could do it the opposite way (the Singaporean or even the Mexican system) for a complete laissez-faire approach. Problem is, we've invested enough in the system that any change hurts us all.
The one system that is definitely and definitively changing, and it's going to be real cool to watch from the Pentagon and White Oak's perspective once the RIF starts, is the Military Health System, home of that bloated mess of uniformed administrators and overworked GMOs (I'm not neutral, I consider the GMO to be one of the worst uses of medical talent and time devised by anyone in the bureaucracy, unfair to both practitioner and patient). That's going to be the demo lab for all the policy changes to come in the civilian world, and so all of us are watching closely at the ASD(HA) and how those changes affect or not affect their cared lives. I've got the popcorn, and you all should take a seat and watch yourself, unless you're going into yourself.
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