by Kris Salo
Following up the highly successful "Friday Afternoon Rants", I'm rolling out "Ranting on Monday": I hope it will have as much success as the previous edition...
We've discussed universal healthcare before - I know that some of us come from different sides of the debate - I'm still more or less pro, but I did want to related the wonderful way that it works here is the bastion of cheese and wine:
Julie recently got a prescription for contact lenses. These are covered by the social security/healthcare system here. The way that this works in France is you pay out of your pocket and then the social security reimburses a percentage of the amount (about 50% for contacts I believe) and then forwards to documents to your complementary "mutuelle" that works more or less like an HMO/work-based health plan in the US. However, instead of covering the entire cost it makes up the difference between what the social security pays and what the actual cost is.
Anyway, she just got her prescription refilled and at the same time she had them change a pair of sunglasses from prescription lenses to normal lenses so she can wear them with her contacts. This is not covered by healthcare because it is a non-medical change. The glasses were 25 euros, her contacts were 50ish. So the guy at the optometrist prints out the receipt, etc. We get back to the car and Julie's looking at the receipt and there are no glasses on the receipt, but the price was the correct one for the glasses plus the contacts. He changed the price of the contacts so they were equal to the price of the glasses and the contacts - which in essence means that the entire country paid for Julie's non-medically necessary glasses. Sure it is nice when you save 25 euros because of this, but imagine that this is happening on a country-wide (65 million citizens) scale. The guy didn't even ask, he just automatically defrauded the state-health apparatus.
On a related note: There was breaking news last week - "Great News: Social Security will only be 12 billion Euros in debt for 2005." Honestly, this is more or less a verbatim translation...You're asking yourself, how is this great news, I'm telling you I don't know. In actuality this is 2 billion less then estimated, hence the great news. This is because they added a mandatory participation (co-pay) of an incredibly painful 1 euro. The thing that kills me is before they added this they were discussing different options to help support this albatross bureaucratic system - and I was saying that a co-pay is the best way to go. People actually argued with me saying, but some people are more sick then others so it costs them more. NO SH!T, THAT'S THE F!CKING POINT! As mentioned, in principle I don't have a problem with universal healthcare ("in principle, Lisa, Communism works") - but why the f*ck should I, who goes to the doctor maybe one time every two years, have to pay the exact same amount as the idiot hypochondriac who goes four times per month. It's the same if you buy more stuff than someone else; you pay more sales tax. There's a difference between ensuring healthcare for everyone, and ensuring that every freak gets to defraud the system on a daily basis.
The thing is that France's healthcare system is fairly well-regarded in the world. After you take a look at the British and Canadian systems, France is amazing. I'm not coming off by universal healthcare stance, but I do recognize that there are problems with most systems. I could go on for days - but it's 10am so I guess I should go check out cnn.com now...