People are telling me that private healthcare is actually good, so I'm investigating. Here's a starting point… theweek.co.uk/nhs/63360/priv
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All healthcare has a private element - private suppliers will inevitably be involved at some level, supplying equipment, drugs, etc. It's really about where the line is drawn. Private hospitals? Trusts?
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My (limited) understanding is that there are many important bits, but the real meat and potatoes are who foots the bill and what controls the prices.
You can have any number of private entities involved, but the real question is cost of care, both to the patient and at large.
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Mostly publicly funded systems with quite strict controls on charges seem to have the best cost to effectiveness ratios from what I've read so far.
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Yes. Unequivocally. Nobody has ever invented a better option, as far as proven performance goes.
Also nothing wrong with supplementing with optional private care, but public options need to be good enough.
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In Poland there is public health insurance, but the hospitals have deeply crooked incentives and the service is underfunded and understaffed.
Private care, or for-pay "enhanced" public care, are the only adequate options.
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Czech Republic is even worse. Their health laws have barely changed since communism. Patient rights & autonomy virtually nonexistent.
I had free care "options", but had to pay a private clinic just to get a sick note when I had mononucleosis. Public doctor had ordered an x-ray.
So I suppose you can add patient rights and inhibition of providers' rights to core features, but really, only the Czechs seem to have a public health care system that is *that* dysfunctional.
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That sounds pretty bad..! This is the thing, the NHS certainly isn't perfect, but there doesn't seem to be that much to recommend another systems over it. In many ways a lot of the better provisions in Europe seem remarkably similar.
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