Does National Health Care Really Work?

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ManusJustus said:

highwaystar101 said:

tombi123 said:

TheRealMafoo said:

I looked up some numbers, and the UK in 2009 will spend 111 billion on healthcare. There GDP is 1,439 billion.

So the cost will be 7.7% of GDP. It also equates to around $1,800 per person, for every person.

Due to the UK being a small land mass, with most of its people living in close proximity, they can be far more efficient then we can. If we were even close to them at $2,500 a person in expenses (good luck with that), that would be 750 billion a year in costs.

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009_1.html#ukgs302G0

To reduce land mass and increase efficiency, couldn't you do it state by state?

I think it's the density of the states that is the issue. In some densely populated states like New Jersey it would be easy because you can build hospitals in centers of high density easily, the same way you would in england. Where as in places like Alaska where the population is sparse a nationalised healthcare system, or any system for that, would be quite unaffective.

You mean countries with sparsed populations like Sweden, Finland, or Norway?  Whom also happen to have national healthcare systems.

Density actually isnt an issue.  Its an issue of health (in terms of proximity to care and time to get treatment), but the cost comparison is the same.  I really dont see where people make up these stats.  If a hospital covers 5,000 people in a 10 mile square area (urban) is compared to a hospital that covers 5,000 people in a 100 mile square (rural area), the cost is virtually the same.

If anything sparsely populated areas are less efficient in the free market. You can have competing hospitals in an urban area while hospitals in rural areas have natural monopolies due to the distances to competitors.

Density may not be much of an issue in European sized countries but i would be referring to sparsely populated areas like Australia, Canada and Alaska.  There are many parts in Australia where you are looking at areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres before you'd have the population to justify even a small primary care hospital, yet there is still an obligation to provide care to people living in these areas.  A single large facility (say 500 beds) in a high population area is far more cost and resource efficient than 10, 50 bed hospitals, which is in the order of magnitude of what is required through much of Australia.