In Israel. The latest from the Candidate Who Has No Positions, this one sure to anger any Tea Party supporters he may have left. Sarah Kliff in WaPo:
Romney praises health care in Israel, where research says ‘strong government influence’ has driven down costs
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had some very kind things to say about the Israeli health care system at a fundraiser there Monday. He praised Israel for spending just 8 percent of its GDP on health care and still remaining a “pretty healthy nation:”
When our health care costs are completely out of control. Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent. You spend 8 percent of GDP on health care. And you’re a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, let me compare that with the size of our military. Our military budget is 4 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 finally manage our health care costs.
Romney’s point about Israel’s success in controlling health care costs is spot on: Its health care system has seen health care costs grow much slower than other industrialized nations.
How it has gotten there, however, may not be to the Republican candidate’s liking: Israel regulates its health care system aggressively, requiring all residents to carry insurance and capping revenue for various parts of the country’s health care system.
Israel created a national health care system in 1995, largely funded through payroll and general tax revenue. The government provides all citizens with health insurance: They get to pick from one of four competing, nonprofit plans. Those insurance plans have to accept all customers—including people with pre-existing conditions—and provide residents with a broad set of government-mandated benefits.
I have to agree with Romney here: if our health care system were the same as Israel’s, our economy would be a lot more efficient and successful, and our health care system would also be much more cost-effective, and more just. Of course, since President Obama has gotten us closer to that goal, and Romney’s entire campaign has until now been predicated on wasting even more money on a dysfunctional system based on private insurers, it is hard to see how this latest political incompetency will help his campaign.
Discuss
13 Comments . Leave a comment below.I don’t know much about Israel’s health care system, but sounds good to me. I wonder how they do it and if it can be replicated here?
Also, not to raise a different subject, but Romney did praise Israel’s economy compared to its neighbors. The net says their tax brackets range from 10% to a high of 46% on the highest wage earners. Surprised nobody picked that up. Perhaps they don’t waste their monies like we do, so people feel they are getting value for their taxes.
It’s pretty simple, Dan – they have four non-profit insurance companies which must offer insurance to everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions. Everyone must purchase insurance from one of those non-profits, and everyone is covered. We could easily replicate that in this country, were it not for the pre-existing FOR-PROFIT insurance companies.
It could be replicated here, were it not for Republican obstructionism. What Israel has is, in effect, four versions of a public option, very much like what was originally proposed for Obamacare, along with a mandate that every Israeli must participate in one of the plans. There are other features very similar to Obamacare, as the Globe reported today (helpful insertions by me):
Of course, the public option would have been in the bill but for Republican obstructionism, as you will no doubt recall. As for keeping down costs, numerous reports (including the WaPo story noted by Bob) have explained that this is because government heavily regulates the health care sector in Israel.
Still interested? If so, welcome aboard.
Wasn’t he the Dem. VP in 2000 and still caucuses with the Dems?
I do believe healthcare is a fundamental right, but no free riders, everyone needs to pay something, perhaps a sales tax just for h.c. I am a realist the quality would likely go down, based on what I have heard/read about what happens in other countries, like if an elderly person needs a new hip, they delay the operation and the patient dies. If we are honest with the pros and cons, I think people will go for it, except for public workers who typically have Cadilac health care coverages. We need to convince them too, instead of getting waivers from Obamacare.
I agree with Romney, Romney supports Obama, Dan is enthusiastic, and somervilletom recommends the post.
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At least in the industrialized west. That is, 1/2 per person. This includes Canada, often maligned by the Republicans for their single payer system in which the government pays the bills and the providers are all privately run.
And our outcomes are no better (usually worse) than these other countries.
Dr. Tim Johnson, medical reporter for ABC News, recently wrote a short book: “The Truth about Getting Sick in America” which documents all of this. I highly recommend it.
Since “better” and “worse” in these contexts aggregate a great many phenomena, one expects that there will be areas in which the U.S. excels — or at least outperforms other countries. That’s how such statistics work. The typical game is to choose one clinical measure that favors the U.S. system and hold that up as if it were representative.
In his book, Time Johnson does a detailed comparison of U.S. and Canada outcomes on various forms of cancer. In some we are better and in others Canada is better. This is the sort of hard objective data that I like to see when evaluating outcomes.
By any objective measure, we are not getting our money’s worth: our outcomes are no where near twice as good as those of other countries who spend 1/2 what we spend per patient. – and all these countries (other industrialized western democracies) have national health plans, and most (like Canada and Israel) guarantee health care to all their citizens.
And Americans could go to Canada to get their cancer treated. Personally, I have a hard time believing there are any cancers I can get which would be treated better in Canada than in the Boston area hospitals such as Dana Farber, Children’s, UMASS Med center…
Are there busses running Americans across the border for treatment (not to be confused with busses taking Americans to Canada for cheap prescription drugs)?
So how many of you would have your children (or recommend having your grandchildren) in these other countries instead of the US? OR… does our culture create terrible numbers because some people are uneducated about drinking/drugs during pregnancy, taking care of yourself, weight, vitamins… in some parts of the US??
…of quality of care vs. access to care. Assuming you can get the care, then yes, there’s a reason people come from all over to be treated in Boston. That, however, doesn’t make a whit of difference to the person who does not have access to care in the first place.
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