Romney Praises Israel's Socialized Health Care System

Buzzfeed ^ | July 30, 2012 | Zeke Miller

[Colonel Kangaroo]

JERUSALEM — Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney offered praise for the Israeli health care system today — a medical plan that has been socialized since its founding in 1948.

Romney, who championed the Massachusetts health care mandate, but is an opponent of the federal mandate passed by President Barack Obama, marveled at how little Israel spends on health care relative to the United States.

“Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? eight percent," Romney told donors at a fundraiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, speaking of a health care system that is compulsory for Israelis and funded by the government. "You spend eight percent of GDP on health care. You're a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18% of our GDP on health care. Ten percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the size of our military — our military which is four percent — four percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of GDP. We have to find ways — not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to find and manage our health care costs."

Romney has explained that he opposes ObamaCare because what worked in Massachusetts may not work for other states. Highlighting the success of the Israeli system — in a country that enjoys one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world — could complicate matters for Romney at home.

Rights of the Insured under the National Health Insurance Law

-—Every Israeli citizen is entitled to health care services under the National Health Insurance Law.

—Every resident has a right to register as a member of an HMO of his/her choice, free of any preconditions or limitations stemming from his/her age or the state of his/her health.

—Every resident has a right to receive, via the HMO of which he or she is a member, all of the services included in the medical services basket, subject to medical discretion, and at a reasonable quality level, within a reasonable period of time and at a reasonable distance from his/her home.

—Each member has a right to receive the health services while preserving the member’s dignity, privacy and medical confidentiality.

—Every Israeli resident has the right to transfer from one HMO to another.

—Each member has a right to select the service providers, such as doctors, caregivers, therapists, hospitals and institutes, from within a list of service providers who have entered into an agreement with the HMO to which the member belongs, and within the arrangements in place for the selection of the service providers, and which the HMO publishes from time to time.

—Each member has a right to know which hospitals and institutes, and other service providers, are included in the agreement with the HMO, and what are the selection processes at the HMO.

—Each member has a right to see and to receive a copy of the HMO regulations.

—Each resident has a right to receive from the HMO complete information concerning the payment arrangements in place in the HMO for health services as well as the HMO’s plans offered for additional health services (CIP).

—Each member has a right to complain with the Public Inquiries commissioner at the medical institute that treated the member, to the person in charge of investigating member complaints at the HMO of which s/he is a member, or to the complaints commissioner for the national health insurance law in the Ministry of Health.

—Each member has a right to file suit at the district labor court.

[American in Israel]

Which means money that Israel would normally spend on military can be diverted to health care. But you’re not the first poster to fail to realize that.

Actually it means that Israel is going broke trying to balance the other four fifths of the military hardware given to the Muslims. They have to draft EVERYBODY into the military in the hope to survive.

Add up all the money given to the Muslim radicals and see how many you can divide it into the second rate stuff we give to Israel.

Like when we delivered all the F16 jets to Israel but refused to include the electronics packages that we did include for the Muslims. Know what you call a F16 with no radar and gun control?

Target drone...

Of course we could have not given any assistance to those dirty Joos and only given Billions to our sworn enemies. But then we would have had to do without a lot of our cutting edge technology that was developed by our ally, Israel.

But for some in this country, thats a fair trade.

[COBOL2Java]

Thanks for the perspective. Can you imagine the howls from the liability lawyers if we tried to make the Israeli system work here by modifying our tort laws?

[ScottfromNJ]

I’m not saying there isn’t good reason to provide military support to Israel for the reasons you stated, what I’m saying is the situation that exists with Israel isn’t much different than what existed in post war Europe where we spent over 100 billion annually to defend them, which allowed those countries to build their nanny states and socialized health care systems rather than pay for their own defense. We were basically funding the European welfare state.