The Unanswered Question

Nearly ten months after the Obama Administration assumed office, little progress has been made in healthcare reform.

The cornerstone of Obama´s healthcare platform, the so-called "Public Option," has been summarily removed from any bill under consideration in Congress and it appears the only thing that political leaders can agree upon is that American-style medicine is in dire need of a makeover.

It seems that a raise in the taxation of Americans with little tangible benefit will result inevitably. What also appears certain is that American lawmakers have heeded very few lessons from their European counterparts´ transition toward universal healthcare.

Take France, for instance, which has, like America, a "payment for services" healthcare system. There are some key differences between our French counterparts and ourselves:

All French citizens have healthcare supplemented by private agencies utilizing a multi-tiered employment-based system strictly regulated by the government, which also establishes and collects, through general payroll taxes, the funding for these private insurance agencies.

This strongly differs from the United States in which private health insurance agencies impose copayments and other hidden costs with almost no government oversight.

Also, there are numerous instances of favoritism shown by US medical care providers toward these insurance companies, including deals in which the agencies pay as little as twenty percent the total cost that an uninsured citizen may pay for the very same medical care.

The toll on our Nation´s faltering economy increases exponentially as most Americans´ health insurance is employer-based: as our unemployment rate rises to nearly ten percent this month, so may the increasing numbers of Americans without health insurance reasonably be expected to follow suit.

In contrast, French citizens receive affordable healthcare, at no additional cost to their fellow citizen, regardless of their current employment status.

Compare this again with America´s own private insurance agencies, which routinely increase healthcare premiums to "cover" rising medical costs.

Another key difference in France is the distribution of medical practitioners. In the United States, barely sixteen percent of all physicians are labeled "general practitioners," the doctors whom a patient would see routinely.

In France, general practitioners comprise over half of all physicians in medicine.

The United States´ emphasis on "specialized" medicine is directly correlative to physicians´ pay. A plastic surgeon has long been a coveted slot for many doctors in this country who seek the high salary and prestige of "servicing the stars´" ceaseless pursuit of beauty and eternal youth.

So while there have been talks of limiting the monetary reward of patient civil suits, there has been very little talk of limiting doctors´ pay as a means to reign in healthcare costs in this country. There´s a fear of hemorrhaging the brightest potential doctors with any hypothetical salary cap, which would only affect the wealthiest doctors who specialize most prominently in fields of elective or cosmetic surgery.

In France where physicians receive less than half the pay of their American counterparts, doctors provide a better, consistently safer service.

The United States greatly exceeds all other industrialized nations in infant deaths: more infant deaths in the USA than in countries such as Lichtenstein or Portugal and twice as many as in France.

France is just one example of successful universal healthcare that has never taken the form of the "communist" horror show so many Americans see in our future.

So while US lawmakers squabble indefinitely over effective change on US medical policy, Americans will continue to die from easily treatable ailments.

The United States will continue to spend more on healthcare than any other nation on the globe.

And a healthcare system that treats "supply and demand" economics first and patient welfare second will continue unhindered by the daily emergence of horror stories that ceaselessly emerge as a result.