Am I the only one who doubt that this is the truth?
I am living in both Paris and the US. It's not what I have experienced.
In Paris, one of my friend has been hit by a motorcycle. The motorcycle run away. She hits the ground and nobody cares. She was disoriented with weird bubble on the skull. I call the french 911, they send the firehouse department who came for finally asking me to go get my car to get her to the hospital. When she can walk, they don't have to take her. I mean WTF?. I took her to the hospital, lot of homeless people, cold waiting room. We wait for 2 hours for her to be taking care of and after that we wait for another 4 hours. The hospital staff were making fun of her because she can't remember her first name and a lot of stuff because of the disorientation (She is pretty so maybe they wanted to take advantage of the situation or something, wtf). Duh? They finally say the scanner didn't revealed anything and send us home. Actually she had blood in her skull and suffer from permanent brain damage now. I mean WTF? Yeah we've paid something like 7 euros I guess, but what's the point if it's for getting treatments from the middle ages?
In opposite, one of my friend got in a car accident in Austin. They wanted to run away, they were DUI but finally get caught. He get to the hospital by an ambulance. Duh? And I finally join him in the hospital. Wahoo, this is day and night. The hospital have scanners or IRMs in every rooms and he has been take of right away. Someone was checking on him every 15 minutes or so. Plenty of devices with computers (duh!) and electronic devices (duh!). And the hospital food was not that bad (for hospital food I mean)! Everything clean and warm, people professional. He didn't get to pay anything because of good coverage.
As always you can always find anecdotes going both ways.
I am French and a public hospital actually forgot my father in a room for a week. He needed surgery, not urgently but in the meantime he had to be kept sedated. They kept him on morphine, fed him but he was not tracked as scheduled for surgery by their information system. And of course nurses kept telling us it was normal.
There is also a lot of abuse from this system, especially since the pharmaceutical lobby is quite powerful. They actually cover 30% of the cost of homeopathy! And when there was a H1N1 epidemy a few years back the French government ordered wice as many doses as the population of the country.
Comparing the cost of healthcare does not take other parameters into account. For instance obesity is not as much of an issue in France than it is in the US, and that helps decrease the overall cost of healthcare.
And of course, part of the reason is also that it is easy to keep prices down by having the State decide them instead of a free market. But the result is that some health professions are clearly underpaid. There were huge demonstrations of midwifes recently because of that, for instance.
But all in all I cannot deny that I still prefer our system to what exists in the US. As comments in this thread shows, it is not our system which is perfect, it is yours that looks terrible.
one of the little flaws of our system ( i'm french) is that all being free a lot of people go to the emergency when a simple visit to the doctor would suffice, this mean emergency rooms are often surcharged and nurses have to prioritize who can see a doctor first and long waiting time when you are not in a critical condition.
I have been in a motorcycle accident, the "fire house departement" ( we call them that but they do 90% medical emergency, they are trained for that ) arrived promptly, i had to wait 1h as i was not in a critical condition but i had all the treatment and analyses you say you had in dallas. And i live in a small country town.
The only other thing who feel real in your account is that the hospital might feel old ( walls, paint, etc. ).
Your friend might not tell you everything or he had a very bad exeptionnal experience who is not representative.
The minor cuts and bruises is not the strong point of the French system. The solidarity principle applies mainly for serious diseases, like the example of the article.
I am living in both Paris and the US. It's not what I have experienced.
In Paris, one of my friend has been hit by a motorcycle. The motorcycle run away. She hits the ground and nobody cares. She was disoriented with weird bubble on the skull. I call the french 911, they send the firehouse department who came for finally asking me to go get my car to get her to the hospital. When she can walk, they don't have to take her. I mean WTF?. I took her to the hospital, lot of homeless people, cold waiting room. We wait for 2 hours for her to be taking care of and after that we wait for another 4 hours. The hospital staff were making fun of her because she can't remember her first name and a lot of stuff because of the disorientation (She is pretty so maybe they wanted to take advantage of the situation or something, wtf). Duh? They finally say the scanner didn't revealed anything and send us home. Actually she had blood in her skull and suffer from permanent brain damage now. I mean WTF? Yeah we've paid something like 7 euros I guess, but what's the point if it's for getting treatments from the middle ages?
In opposite, one of my friend got in a car accident in Austin. They wanted to run away, they were DUI but finally get caught. He get to the hospital by an ambulance. Duh? And I finally join him in the hospital. Wahoo, this is day and night. The hospital have scanners or IRMs in every rooms and he has been take of right away. Someone was checking on him every 15 minutes or so. Plenty of devices with computers (duh!) and electronic devices (duh!). And the hospital food was not that bad (for hospital food I mean)! Everything clean and warm, people professional. He didn't get to pay anything because of good coverage.