Posted on 05/06/2017 5:43:53 AM PDT by PeaRidge
My friend, who lived in France for five years, and now in US, thinks our new health system is not only unnecessarily inadequate, but unsophisticated.
She says that in France that:
You get immediate appointments
Immediate treatment
World class results
Mideast sheiks go there
Relatively low cost meds (if you have to pay at all)
Latest improvements
All Free
To pay for this, she says All French citizens pay taxes.
Everyone pays the same percentage tax....35%
One page tax filing
To fellow Freepers......truth please.
Have a friend who found blood while going to the bathroom.
Within two weeks he was set up for chemo, radiation, got a bunch of tests to help direct the radiation to a very precise area, and docs are 90 percent optimistic the colon cancer will be gone either by just these treatments or the removal of whatever is left by the end of six weeks treatment.
I dont hear about that happening in Europe.
The VA is single payer, MediCaid is single payer, MediCare is single payer.
Neither he nor you should pay anything close to 35%.
My daughter in law lived with her husband in France til last fall. The general healthcare is very good. You get 5-7 days in the hospital when you have a baby. Fois gras is on the menu. But my guess is that as with most universal medicine elder care procedures are likely rationed. And France only has about 60 million people as opposed to 330 million here and 20 million illegals.
“The Socialists don’t really care for the individual but treat the collective.” Yeah, we saw them treat the collective in the 20th century. Was close to 100 million of them........
“My daughter in law lived with her husband in France til last fall.”
—
Wouldn’t that be your son???
.
A few years before my younger daughter died, we were going to The Mayo Clinic in MN every year. We were up there one time and were coming down in the elevator with some maids. They were talking about not wanting to go to a certain floor. I learn more by listening. They said the Arabs on that floor would toss the used bathroom paper on the floor. Yuck. The King of Jordan and his big group had taken over a whole hospital floor. When we got on the plane to come home, the King’s plane was next to ours. I was not too impressed with it but guess the color made sense for that area. God bless.
“Everyone? Even the “poor” and minorities and special victim groups?”
That’s a great idea for a new tv show: “IRS: Special Victims Bracket.”
It’s early, I’ll get better.
It is superior to ours in results and delivery.
It is paid for by unmercifully high taxation, which results in limited free market opportunities.
Choices, choices.
You get immediate appointments
Immediate treatment
To fellow Freepers......truth please.
Your friend is a liar.
No its Mr. GG2’s daughter.
“Big stores with lots of sweaty people have no ac.”
Sweaty Frenchmen. Hairy-legged - and other places - sweaty French women. no thanks.
Menu pricing required.
No Federal regulations, only State insurance and healthcare regulation.
Consumer based insurance plans.
Individual states to determine safety net for low income and uninsurable (high risk pools)
Jordan is light years ahead of the US in this respect.
Wait, now I’m really confused ;-)
Wouldn’t that make her your step-daughter, and not daughter in law? And, her hubby your step-son-in-law?
I need more coffee! ;-)
We witnessed a motorcycle (they’re EVERYWHERE) accident, in Paris. The rider literally hit the back of a stopped car (at traffic light), full speed, and flew off of his bike and hit the pavement.
It took at least 20 mins for the ambulance to get to this guy (who folks had since moved over to the sidewalk). Once the ambulance arrived they then worked on the guy, on the sidewalk....not in the ambulance....for another 20 mins. After which they FINALLY hauled the guy off (to the hospital?? Who knows :).
It was the most bizarre ‘emergency’ treatment we’d ever witnessed.
Reminded me of the Princess Diana accident where they worked on her CAR SIDE, on the ROAD, for what seemed like an hour, before declaring her dead :(
As well as an outright ban on “cost shifting”.
There wouldn’t be any cost shifting if we didn’t have fixed pricing from Medicare, Medicaid and the large insurers. In a sense we do have menu pricing; it’s fixed and a part of the Medicare, Medicaid fee schedules.
Remember when Nixon did price controls? We had something similar when business gave new names to their products. Butchers created new cuts of beef and charged what they wanted.
If you really want prices to come down, the share that the individual pays must go up. It’s an incontrovertible fact that people are always more careful about spending their own money than someone else’s money (i.e., insurance company, government)
Needs repeating.
Pea Ridge, your friend is a liar.
France has the highest taxes in Europe, with a 75% top rate. Those who don’t pay income taxes still pay ‘social services fees’.
The French government spends more than 55% of GDP, compared to 20% or so the US federal government spends of GDP. US states spend another 10% or so of GDP.
France is a basket case that needs to grovel before Germany for instructions on how to survive, even without noting their defeat at the hands of Muslim invaders.
A Family Friend is a famous Guitarist now in his early 70’s.
While in France he tripped and fell in the Street. He broke his Right Arm in two places.
He was taken to the Hospital and they “set” his Arm.
He flew Home a couple of days later and his Wife took him to an Orthopedic Doctor.
They had to “reset” his Arm because it wasn’t quite right.
Which reminds me. My Father In Laws Wife had am issue when vacationing in Sweden. The Doctor there gave her Medication to treat it.
When she got Home she went to see her Primary Care Doctor. She showed him the Medication and the Doctor threw it away and gave her something else. He said the Medication she was given in Sweden was used to treat Horses.
I try to just keep it simple. :-)
Hey Pea,
I had my gallbladder removed in Paris some years ago while on a business trip. I had a severe attack lasting hours in my hotel. The hotel sent a doctor to my room. He diagnosed my problem as stomach flu. I told him that it was something more serious.
At my insistence he sent me to a place to get an ultrasound image taken. There were several pregnant women there getting ultrasounds of their babies. They looked at me strangely. I was sprawled out horizontally on some of the chairs in an attempt to get comfortable. The ultrasound showed that I had a large gallstone The doctor apologized for his earlier diagnosis and sent me to the American Hospital in Paris, which may well be the best hospital in Paris.
I was glad that was where I was being sent. This is the place the sheiks come to get medical treatment. They apparently come to the American Hospital in Paris for medical treatment rather than to other French hospitals, but I’ve not seen statistics on where the sheiks go.
I do not remember the nationality of the doctor who operated on me. I only met him briefly, but I was almost out of it in pain at the time. He did speak English. I looked just now at the papers recently published by members of the hospital staff. Based on their last names, most of the doctors who authored the papers appear not to be Americans, but they could well have been trained in the United States.
I had a fever, so the hospital doctor thought I should have the gallstone removed there in Paris quickly, rather than having me fly home to the States to have it removed there.
Anyway, the operation was successful. The gallstone they removed was an inch in diameter. I had to stay in a hotel in Paris for about nine days afterward until my incision healed enough for me to fly home. This was before robotic procedures were developed to remove gallstones through very small incisions. My operation left a large scar across my abdomen.
About a year after the gallbladder and stone removal I developed a large hernia on the incision scar. The surgeon at home who repaired that hernia shook his head that the Paris doctors had only sewed up one layer of muscle at the incision rather than two layers of muscle as he would have done.
The French nurses were something else. When I was taking a shower, they would come in and suddenly open the shower curtain. Maybe that practice would enliven the care we get in our prudish American hospitals.
On checking out of the hospital in Paris I sat waiting about 30-40 minutes while the check out lady on the staff just ignored me and handled other later arrivals at the discharge office. That was the only time I have ever seen rudeness from a French person. Finally, in desperation, I asked one of the other people in the office so that the rude lady would hear, that I was doctor so and so (well I am, but a PhD, not an MD), and I wanted to check out of the hospital and pay my bill. I’m pretty mild mannered and wouldn’t have ordinarily spoken up like I did later, but I had politely told the rude lady when I arrived that I wanted to check out. My later frustrated statement to others got the rude lady’s attention, and she immediately started processing me out, perhaps fearing that a “doctor” like me might tell the French doctors of her behavior.
That was my experience with the semi-French health care system at the American Hospital in Paris.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.