Welcome to Guest Blogger, Anne Kinzel, JD.   Anne, a CodeBlueNow! Honorary Board Member, is currently employed at large, midwestern public university.  Anne is well-versed in issues of health policy and health disparities resulting from social inequities; she gained this insight working as the Iowa Department of Public Health’s State Planning Grant Project Director.  A Franco-American citizen, Anne writes today about what we can learn from France’s health care system.

It’s a big world out there and Americans are notorious for being oblivious to geography. Nowhere is our ignorance hurting us more than in our favorite topic of health care reform.
 
Bring up universal coverage in the U.S. and more often than not someone will mention Canada, long lines, and those hordes of Canadians crossing the border in search of available and affordable health care. Those with a slightly broader world view usually bring up the failure of socialized medicine in Great Britain. I am not going to debate the veracity of these claims. True or not, I am tired of them, really tired.
 
So, if you are like me – and are bored with Canada and the U.K. – it’s time to take a trip to France and look at health care, French style. Like all things Gallic, France’s system is elegant and pragmatic, admittedly imperfect, and more than a little Cartesian in approach.
 
What can we learn from the French when it comes to health care and health care reform? It turns out a lot, and maybe the most important lesson we can learn is that it is absolutely possible to deliver good quality health care, to an entire population, at an acceptable cost.
 
By now, you either think I am high on goose liver pâté, an idiot, or some kind of weird optimist. But here’s the deal – The French are as aware as we are that there is no perfect system and that in health care there are no days without challenges either at the individual or societal level.
 
And yet, the prickly French have managed to devise a system that was rated the best in the world by the World Health Organization in 2001, because of its coverage universality, its recognition and respect for patient and provider autonomy, its ability to promote longevity and good health. In that same year, our American system achieved a ranking of 38th, and I don’t know anybody who thinks we have improved much since then.
 
Here are just some of the things that I think are important about French style health care that I will be addressing:

• Provider choice is sacrosanct. The French system is based on choice.
• Quality costs and it pays. The French system is not cheap ($3,048 per capita vs. $6,711 in the US (KFF Snapshots: Health Care Costs. Health Care Spending in the United States and OECD Countries, January 2007.)
• There is no socialized health care in France. There is a national health insurance, la Securité Sociale, or as the French call it, la Sécu. It coexists with a large private health care system.
• French doctors are a long ways from the poor house. But their pill hill residences are far more modest than those of their American counterparts.

These are just some of the things we will explore. Remember, it’s never too late to learn something new. I hope you will join me as I post over the course of the next week. Why not say, “Zut, alors! Maybe the French are on to something. It’s a big health care world out there and I want to know more about it.”