The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

by T.R. Reid

To summarize what we’ve seen in this book, here are five common American myths about health care systems overseas: MYTH 1: “IT’S ALL SOCIALIZED MEDICINE OUT THERE.” This venerable notion has become such a commonplace in the United States that it transcends our nation’s political divide. Conservative think tanks and presidential candidates routinely declare that “European-style socialized medicine” cannot work in the capitalistic USA. On the left, producer Michael Moore made the same assumption in his satirical documentary Sicko—except Moore argued that foreign medical systems work better than ours because they’re all “socialized.” In fact, it’s not all socialized medicine out there. Most wealthy countries rely on private-sector mechanisms to provide and/or pay for health care. Indeed, some foreign health care systems are more privatized than ours.