According to Jonathan Cohn, the American government has more than enough money to take care of people without health insurance.
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Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor of The New Republic, where he writes a blog called “The Treatment.” He is also the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis – and the People Who Pay the Price (HarperCollins
The New Republic senior editor Jonathan Cohn discusses power players of health care reform, including the insurance lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, the American Medical Association and Congress on NPR’s Fresh Air.
It’s no secret that Obama’s notion of healthcare reform has been met with sharp criticism by conservatives. They steadfastly object a universal model they view to be analogous with models in the UK and Canada, noted for their poor quality of care, long waits, and restrictions on specialty treatments. Jonathan Cohn disagrees. In his recent Boston Globe article he argues that the system we’d create would more closely resemble France or the Netherlands, which may not be a bad thing.
As Cohn says, “…Both the Dutch and French appear to have easy access to basic medical care – easier access, in fact, than is the American norm.
In both the Netherlands and France, most people have long-standing relationships with their primary care doctors. And when they need to see these doctors, they do so without delay or hassle. In a 2008 survey of adults with chronic disease conducted by the Commonwealth Fund …60 percent of Dutch patients and 42 percent of French patients could get same-day appointments. The figure in the US was just 26 percent…
Of course, reforming health insurance in the US isn’t going to turn this country into France or the Netherlands overnight, any more than it would turn the US into Britain and Canada. The truth is that the changes now under consideration in Washington are relatively modest, by international sta
ndards. But insofar as countries abroad give us an idea of what could happen, eventually, if we change our health insurance arrangements, the experience of people in Amsterdam and Paris surely matters as much as – if not more than – those in Montreal and London. In those countries, government intervention has created a health system in which people seem to have the best of all worlds: convenience, quality, and affordability. There’s no reason to think the same thing couldn’t happen here.”
Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor of The New Republic, where he writes a blog called “The Treatment.” He is also the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis – and the People Who Pay the Price (HarperCollins).
