Cato’s Michael Tanner has a new survey paper of health systems in Canada, Japan, and a number of European countries. Tanner’s conclusions are worth repeating.
- Universal health insurance does not mean universal access to health care.
- Rising health care spending is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
- Those countries with national health care systems that work better, such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, are successful to the degree that they incorporate market mechanisms such as competition, cost-consciousness, market prices, and consumer choice, and eschew centralized government control.
- Dissatisfaction and discontent with a nation?s health care system seems to be universal.
- even as Americans debate adopting a government-run system, countries with those systems are debating how to make their systems look more like that of the United States.
