Well, what standards would you like to go by? Life expectancy, infant mortality, average wait times for specific procedures, cost per capita? Choose an objective measure for determining the best healthcare and we can see how the US measures up.
It's interesting how many different systems there are in the different developed first-world countries. Each has its strengths and drawbacks. Anti-universal-healthcare Americans like to cherry-pick disdvantages from particular systems and say, look how rubbish this is. For example they'll highlight countries that have waiting lists and say, how terrible! (Ignoring the fact that most people would rather wait a bit to get a non-emergency procedure done than not have it done at all.) However, if you then say, look as France (for example), France doesn't have waiting lists, there's complete silence.
A country devising a universal healthcare system
de novo has all these working examples to look at. Any reasonable commission of enquiry could examine them and report as to what was good and what was bad. That country could examine its own requirements also - does it, as a nation, value low cost? Or does it value speedy treatment over keeping costs low? These sorts of considerations would influence the type of system chosen.
The chosen system wouldn't necessarily be identical to any one in existence at present. It should be possible to learn from the mistakes of others while profiting from their successful experiments. America in particular should be in a strong position, because current per-capita spending on health is so high. With such a high starting point, it would be hard to devise an even more expensive system, and just about anything ought to be a net money-saver in the end, even if particularly low-cost options were ignored.
America is a world leader in many fields. The country is not short of brains and savvy and organisational know-how - just as it's obviously not short of money to spend on healthcare. Yes, it is a late starter compared to almost everybody else, and that has its problems as well as its advantages. And as universal healthcare systems tend to evolve from the existing base, that as well will no doubt influence the options chosen.
But it's not an insoluble problem. So how come, whenever the subject is raised, all we seem to get from many quarters is the assumption that in this one area of endeavour, America and Americans are uniquely incompetent, and that any system devised by Amercians for Americans will inevitably be a disaster?
Right now, the American system is scary. Even if you're in employment, not every employer provides good health insurance. And people can and do lose their jobs all the time. People who thought they had good insurance coverage find themselves having to fight insurance companies tooth and nail to get what they need. Some people, indeed, are very well served. But many are not - either because they have no insurance coverage (perhaps they lost their job), or because their coverage was inadequate for the needs they developed, or because the company simply decides it's going to weasel out of paying.
The world's a big place. But there's only one developed first-world country where I seriously would not want to live because of concerns over healthcare provision, and that's the USA. You'd think the world's only superpower could do a better job than this.
Rolfe.
