Are There Any European Countries That Don't Have Socialized Health Care?
January 7, 2018
Alex Henderson, Periodista and Technical Writer
All European countries have universal healthcare, which is why Europeans enjoy greater life expectancy than the U.S. and don't suffer medical bankruptcies on a grand scale. However, not all of them have single-payer systems. The U.K. has the National Health Service (NHS), a government-operated system. One also finds public systems in Italy and Spain, while France has a public/private system. But the system in Switzerland is a privatized system, with subsidized insurance. The Swiss system is, in some respects, comparable to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare, but with much stricter regulations and much more comprehensive coverage. Obamacare pales in comparison to the Swiss system, although it’s much better than the “let the sick, lowly peasants die in the streets” approach of the Republican Party.
Germany and the Netherlands have also taken the “universal healthcare via the private sector” approach, with much better results than the hell we suffer in The Banana Republic of America.
What American politicians need to do is conduct a serious country-by-country analysis on healthcare and have a frank discussion about what works in other countries. But Republicans and Tea Party types can be stupidly, ignorantly nationalistic. Many Americans don't speak any language other than English, don't own passports, have never traveled abroad (even if they could afford it) and know nothing about life in other countries apart from the crap they hear on Fox News. So when Goober The American Exceptionalist suffers a diabetic foot amputation that could have been prevented and loses his house, his car and his life savings to medical bankruptcy along with his foot, he'll still insist that, "'Murica has the best health care in the world." Pathetic.
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