Look abroad

Other countries have more effective and less costly 'hybrid' health-care systems. Why not copy them?

French ambulances.
(Image credit: MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP/Getty Images)

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

If we were a saner nation with a functional political system, we'd be having a very different debate about health care. Congressional Republicans wouldn't be trying to put health-care coverage out of the reach of millions of people (but only after the next election or two). Democrats wouldn't insist that the only alternative to the clunky status quo is a single-payer system that, as Vermont and California have already discovered, would require a doubling of taxes and government spending. In this saner nation, Republicans would see that it's foolish, and ultimately futile, to try to reverse ObamaCare's primary success: Most Americans now see health care as a right, not an optional consumer good. But ObamaCare needs fixing because it was conceived as a patch on a fundamentally incoherent system. The U.S. spends 50 to 100 percent more of its GDP than other advanced nations do on health care, to produce a system that still leaves millions uncovered and ranks at the bottom of every independent assessment of quality.

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.