United States Healthcare vs France Healthcare
Americans spent 17.9% of their gross domestic product on health in 2010 while France spent 11.9% of it on the same year on health (according to the World Health Organization). The lower level in French spending demonstrates a better efficiency of the system. There is no unique public insurance organization like in France. According to Reinhardt, only 10% of the French population has a private health insurance. French health-care system are universal multi-payer systems whereas American people “evidently view health care as essentially a private consumption of which low-income families might be accorded a basic ration but whose availability should be allowed to vary with family income.”(Reinhardt, Health affairs, 1994).Cost control will be a major stake in each country to keep a certain stability of the system. The government health expenditure makes us aware that Germany and France subsidize the major part of total health expenditure: around 77% of the total health expenditure while the US government only spends 53% (according to World Health Organization, 2010). In opposition, US private health expenditure represents around 46% of the total health expenditure, when France and Germany private expenditure only reach 22% of the total. In the World Health Organization report for global care of 2000, Germany has been ranked 25th out of 191 countries taking account of cost and effectiveness while France is ranked 1st and the United States 37th. However, France also encounters problems of its own, even when it comes to healthcare. The Social Security will encounter a 15 billion deficit, according to Les Echos, a French newspaper.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling the US will be moving closer to the health-care systems now in place across Europe. The health care systems of both France and the U.S. face crises of unprecedented scope. Both countries possess large and growing elderly populations that threaten to push the pace of health care price increases even higher than their already faster-than-inflation rates. Observers in both countries fear that outlays for increasingly expensive medical treatments and technologies will wreak havoc on public spending priorities. In the U.S, unchecked health care inflation will imperil Medicare and Medicaid, spur ever-larger federal budget