USA has one of the worst examples of health care: 17% GDP spending on health care. It’s not just the most expensive private health care system, it’s the most expensive health care system.
But it’s also not a fully privatized health care system, or even the most privatized one. Roughly half of the insurance spending is public via Medicare, Medicaid, military, etc.
Switzerland’s and Netherland’s systems can be viewed as more privatized (100% of insurances are via private sector, NL almost all hospitals are private), and are way more efficient than the US system.
Looks like privatized health care + private insurance works the best, but it does seem to require some guardrails (which you might call socialism, I guess). But also devil’s in the details and it’s possible to do everything badly. I also wouldn’t be too amazed if somebody managed to do fully socialized healthcare well. But I would be amazed if such a system stayed good longer than a few decades.
I’d argue it’s because the other countries have tempered capitalism with socialism to create strong social nets to protect people.
USA has one of the worst examples of health care: 17% GDP spending on health care. It’s not just the most expensive private health care system, it’s the most expensive health care system.
But it’s also not a fully privatized health care system, or even the most privatized one. Roughly half of the insurance spending is public via Medicare, Medicaid, military, etc.
Switzerland’s and Netherland’s systems can be viewed as more privatized (100% of insurances are via private sector, NL almost all hospitals are private), and are way more efficient than the US system.
Looks like privatized health care + private insurance works the best, but it does seem to require some guardrails (which you might call socialism, I guess). But also devil’s in the details and it’s possible to do everything badly. I also wouldn’t be too amazed if somebody managed to do fully socialized healthcare well. But I would be amazed if such a system stayed good longer than a few decades.