French health care vs. American health care

[YourNameHere]

 

[Anicette]

thanks you for the reporting.

I am happy to live in the country that provide the best health care in the world. It is a valuable because no one will die of a curable illness because he cannot pay or be in debt for the rest of his life… Even if we cannot afford to pay a complémentaire santé, a part of our expenses are covered by the Securité Sociale.

Recently, a law permits to provide complementary health coverage paid by the employers (like in the US).

Yet, the quality of our health care is deteriorating in the recent years. less financial coverage, more expensive complémentaire santé, less doctors, low quality of hospital, shutdown of maternity…

Some correction to the video:
" No general practicioner approval to see a specialist".

• not completely true. For some years, to see the average specialist, a patient should go to his general practicioner first. If he don’t do it, the coverage will be less than if he did.
  A few specialist does not need to see a general practicioner first such as gynecolologist, pediatrician and ophtamologist.

The medical desert:

• yes in the rural France, but not only. The poor urban areas are also concerned. In fact almost all the country is concerned by a lack of physicians, except the Mediteranean littoral.
  The problem is we don’t instructed enough new physicians in our universities, and the new one (more women than men) are not interested a lot in being liberal practitionner. they prefered to work for a salary, because it means less work hours, holidays, less administrative work and less judiciary responsability.
  For exemple, in Normandy, the average age of a liberal family doctor is more than 60 years old, and that is around the age of retirement. The doctors who stopped are not reimplaced. So in 5 years, we will not have the rate of doctor per inhabitants given in the video.
  My family, for eg, lived in a medical desert and we don’t have find a family doctor. If we need one, we have to go to the hospital or make longs hours of drive.

On the hospital, yes it is true that the situation is going worst. They cannot functionned without physicians. So, for eg, in our hospital, around 70% of doctors are foreigners. It is average in less attractives structures.
It is a shamed for a developped country to rely on aboard ressources…

Seing a specialist is also difficult in many circunstances with months of waiting.

Dental and optic care are very expensive and a lot of people renounced to some treatments.
And sadly, recently all the acts needs for an abortion is 100% cover, whereas the same acts are not completely covered for a normal pregnancy .

Yet, it is very valuable that almost all the maternity costs are covered.