Norway and Switzerland: Two Examples of a far Better Health System

GUEST COMMENT
The European countries that use private insurers (among them Norway and Switzerland) have systems that in some ways are similar to the Senate plan (mandatory insurance, government help in paying for premiums if one is poor). HOWEVER, they spend a minimum of 40 percent less per capita than we do because they treat health insurance as a public utility instead of a for-profit industry.

All insurers must be non-profits. The government reviews health care costs annually to be sure providers are decently recompensed and sets premiums to match. Businesses and individuals pay the set premiums and every resident receives the same set of benefits. There are no co-pays, no denials (except for obvious fraud), no excuses like imaginary pre-existing conditions to refuse to insure.

Competition is based only on each company's level of customer service.

Is it too late for some good Dem on the conference committee to suggest burying both the House and Senate versions of the bill and substituting the Norway plan for REAL reform?? (Second only to single-payer.)

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENTS
Norway has a straight up public system paid for by progressive taxation. The system is administered by the Norway Government. All citizens and I think all residents who are not citizens are automatically enrolled. Those who have no taxable income (such as housewives) get health care at no charge.

Norway heavily subsidizes the supply side: doctors get educated at extremely low cost to them, and hospitals are mostly or entirely funded by Norway Government.

This is the best possible system yet thought of and proved to be successful. Health care systems have to be run by the government or they simply do not work out right: people end up not getting care they need for any of numerous reasons when the private sector is involved. Moreover, when the private sector is involved with health care, other parts of the private economy are damaged when the health sector overuses scarce financial resources.

Private health insurance has virtually no presence in Norway except at the margins, for example, for dental care.

It's not simply that countries like Norway do not have large amounts of money going to insurance companies. It's that countries like Norway do not agree in the first place that the insurance concept is appropriate or useful for health care, which it is not when you truly understand what insurance is and when you spend some time thinking about whether it works for health care.

Switzerland has private insurance companies but they are very strictly non-profit, not to mention that all high income individuals in Switzerland (including executives of the private insurance companies) make a lot less than half what their US counterparts fleece from their "customers". When a private company is strictly non-profit (not the pretend, sort of non-profit which is so common in the States) it economically acts not all that differently than a government agency.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.