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

by T.R. Reid

MYTH 5: “THOSE SYSTEMS ARE TOO FOREIGN TO WORK IN THE USA.” I encountered numerous approaches to providing and paying for health care in the course of my global quest. But each of them fell into one of the four basic categories set forth in chapter 2. Far from being “foreign,” each of these systems is in use today in the United States. For veterans, active-duty military personnel, and Native Americans, we use the British model. For people over sixty-five, we’ve adopted the Canadian model (we even use the name for it that was coined by the socialist who invented the Canadian system: Medicare). For working people who get insurance through their employers, we’re a Bismarck country, like Germany or Japan. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we’re just another Out-of-Pocket country. Of course the foreign models could work for Americans; they already do.