There is an excellent debate going on over at FatFu right now and I would like to encourage everyone to read it including the comments. But for the sake of expression I would like to go over a few of my thoughts while reading the comments.

There seems to be a fair amount of support for nationalized health care (NHC) in general but not necessarily for well thought out reasons (IMHO). Most of the posts I read came from people who have experienced nationalized health care from various places like Germany, UK, Japan and Australia to mention a few.

The one thing that I kept picking up on was people who experienced really loved the fact that they could go to the doctor “for free” but all the while telling the negative sides as if it was not a big deal. First the good news;

Apparently you can go to the doctor without any worry about pre-existing conditions. They did not face a tremendous amount of discrimination because of their weight although there was some. In some (but not all) countries you can go to the doctor if you are jobless.  Another thing I read that I thought was good (sort of) was the fact that private insurance was still available but optional. I also read one person’s comment that said they had a doctor come to their home.

Now to the less than attractive side as I see it.  In some countries you have to pay your share even if you are young and healthy or even if your jobless. Doctors were limited in what they got paid and one quote that came from a person who lived in Japan is that many doctors did not want to accept national health care patients because the government would only pay $8 to the physician. There were some mention of waiting month’s for care even though others said they got in right away in certain places so at the very least some do have to wait months. I did pick up on some stating there was underfunding by the government. The lack of choice of doctor was also mentioned. Another thing that was also mentioned repeatedly was having to travel long distances for health care because the province they lived in did not have a doctor. This might also be the case in some remote areas in the U.S. however I’ve lived in some pretty small places and there was always a doctor. One last thought that occurred to me was when I read that you could also opt for private health care insurance in addition to NHC was ” If public insurance is so good then why would anyone need private insurance?”  You decide.

My lament in the post so far is that most comments came from people who seem to have a bias toward the employee’s side with total disregard of the employers side. But at least on commenter from Japan laid her experience out secinctly and included actual cost and included the perspective of health care providers and how it effected them.

Overall this is a very good debate going on over at FatFu and I would encourage anyone to go be a part of it. I want to thank Meowser for her brave and open minded post.