National universal healthcare…

The United States is the only country in our today’s industrialized world that still has no universal health care system, in comparison the oldest universal health care system is in Germany, which had its inception in 1883 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (the most conservative of politicians btw.)

In December 2008 The McKinsey Global Institute issued an exhaustive 122-page report on health care costs in America, entitled “Accounting for the costs of US healthcare: A new look at why Americans spend more.”

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/healthcare.asp

Because I live in Germany I would like to tell you a little bit about our health care system that works now for more than one hundred years.

It is not the best available system but is still considered as one of the best health care system in the world. Well, I think I should go a little bit more into details….

Germany’s health care system consists of 252 public health insurance companies, which cover almost 90 percent of the population, about 73 million people. The other 10 percent – mostly high earners and the self-employed — are covered by private insurance plans.

Health policy is one of the most important fields of policy. It is equally important in the US as it is in Germany or anywhere else in the world. The health care system is a vital and highly sensitive  sector of the economy. If it fails, not only the costs are growing for everyone, it will have effects on the economy in general.

In Germany, approximately 70 million out of a total population of 82 million people are covered by the social health insurance system, to which they pay a percentage of their wages and salaries as contributions… in short it is financed by a payroll tax.

The individual’s premium is not a per-capita levy, as it is in the United States. It is purely income-based. This article in the Washington Post explains it really well….

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/health-reform-without-a-public-plan-the-german-model/

“An employee’s non-working spouse is automatically covered by the employee’s premium. Unemployment insurance pays the premiums for unemployed individuals, and pension funds share with the elderly in financing their premiums, which are set below actuarial costs for the elderly.

Finally, premiums for children are covered by government out of general revenues, on the theory that children are not the human analogue of pets whose health care should be their owners’ (parents’) fiscal responsibility. Instead, children are viewed as national treasures whose health care should be the entire nation’s fiscal responsibility.

The health insurance premiums paid by Germans are collected in a national, government-run central fund that effectively performs the risk-pooling function for the entire system. This fund redistributes the collected premiums to some 200 independent, nongovernmental, competing, nonprofit “sickness funds” among which Germans can choose.

For example, if individual A chooses sickness fund X, then the central fund will give to fund X a capitation payment that uses over 80 variables to identify individual A’s actuarial risk. The same payment would be made for this individual to any other fund. Thus, the sickness funds in Germany only perform the third function mentioned above — acting as purchasing agents on behalf of the central fund and patients”

At present, employees pay an average around 7.5% of their salary for health insurance coverage, with their employers contributing 6.6%. In the German health care system, this means that those who earn less also pay less, whereas high-income earners pay more.

Children and non-employed spouses are co-insured free of charge. Health insurance is based on the principle of social solidarity but without a government-run health insurance plan like Medicare. This means that contributions are made according to financial abilities and people receive benefits that correspond to their needs.

Persons who earn more than $4,700 per month or are self-employed, can either stay in the social system on a voluntary basis or choose a private health insurance.

Insurance companies in Germany offer a comprehensive package of services. They cover, for instance, outpatient treatment and hospital treatment, all necessary medication, dental treatment, dental prostheses, as well as rehabilitation. In other words, whatever is necessary.

The principle is that the rich pay for the poor, the young for the old — the healthy for the sick. Blue and white-collar workers who earn less than $4,700 per month, are insured on a mandatory basis, as are persons who are out of work, pensioners, poor and homeless people. They are all covered in the statutory health insurance system according to the same provisions and enjoying equal access to health benefits and services.

Now, in both the United States and Germany, we face a common problem: Rising expenditure leads to higher contributions and thus to economic difficulties. Rising contribution rates lead to reduced real earnings. They raise the non-wage labor costs, weaken the investment capacity of enterprises and impair their competitiveness. In Germany, however, it is not only the employers who view rising health insurance expenses as an economic threat. Employees themselves are not happy either when their insurer raises their contribution rate or premium. After all, these increases eat away at their disposable net income and force them to cut down on other purchases.

Well, now think of all the millions people who have NO health insurances in the US….

The prerequisite, however, is that policymakers in Germany do not allow to be coopted by lobbyists.

As you can well imagine, there is no shortage of powerful health lobbyists in Washington or in Berlin. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, spares neither costs nor efforts when it comes to influencing politicians.

So we will get the “electronic health card” at the end of this year I believe… (not sure here) Thanks to this card, every physician, doctor, hospital — anywhere in Germany — will have easy access to the health details of their patients and be able to avoid treatment errors. It goes without saying that the storage of these data will have to satisfy the most stringent security precautions.

Well, we will see… but all in all people here would never miss this system, even if we pay more…

As everything, also our health care system needs a reform. Time changed, the economy changed, everything changed… so a reform is necessary. But even if we need a reform our health care costs are still less than half of those in the US.

I know Americans who (although they have health care from the military) buy the German insurance, so they pay maybe 20-40 Euro per month but have EVERYTHING covered.

What Republicans and FAUX news, Rush and all the other idiots find so abhorrent with this is that large insurance companies and the medical health system, hospitals (corporations for profit), and doctors cannot get immediately rich by preying on sick people, the very people they claim to help, for riches. This is a concern to politicians since they received large sums of money from this industry.

Don’t get me wrong…I am all for making money. But most businesses make money when you use their product right?

Insurance companies in the US make money when you DON’T. Therefore they don’t want to pay your claims. Or they don’t want to cover anyone who might need coverage. This is the weakness in the for profit health insurance business and the reason the US has 47 million uninsured AND the reason that one in four WITH insurance file for bankruptcy every year.

This “for profit insurance” must have an end. Health care dollars MUST go for health care, not lobbiest and CEO’s bonuses.

Here is another great article, worth reading….

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_n1_v46/ai_11791915/

There is a lot of misinformation out there about our health care system… I wish more people were interested to know how it works in other countries. Even if our countries are different, maybe with different needs, but we do can learn from each other….