Sick Around the World 2

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Content Objective:

Identify, research, and clarify issues relating to health care by gathering, using, and evaluating researched information to support analysis and conclusion.

Language Objectives:

• Identify and analyze multiple and diverse perspectives as critical consumers of information.
• Analyze an event, issue, problem, or phenomenon, critiquing and evaluating characteristics,
  influences, causes, and both short- and long-term effects.
• Propose, compare, and evaluate multiple responses, alternatives, or solutions to issues or
  problems; then reach an informed, defensible, supported conclusion.

Learning Target:

Students will identify, research, and clarify issues relating to health care by gathering, using, and evaluating researched information to support their analysis and conclusion.

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In Sick Around the World, the documentary series explores healthcare delivery in the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland. It explores the pros and cons of universal coverage, the cost of drugs, and what it’s like to practice medicine in different countries.

Germany

Bismarck model

Reid’s journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as “a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy.” As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.

Germany, like Japan, uses a social insurance model. But unlike the Japanese, who get insurance from work or are assigned to a community fund, Germans are free to buy their insurance from one of more than 240 private, nonprofit sickness funds. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health,  homeopathy and spa treatment. As in Japan, the poor receive public assistance to pay their premiums. Sickness funds are nonprofit and cannot deny coverage based on preexisting conditions; they compete with each other for members, and fund managers are paid based on the size of their enrollments. Germans can go straight to a specialist without first seeing a gatekeeper doctor, but they pay higher co-pay if they do. Like Japan, Germany is a single-payment system and medical providers must charge standard prices, but instead of the government negotiating the prices, the sickness funds bargain with doctors as a group. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts. This system leaves some German doctors feeling underpaid. A family doctor in Germany makes about two-thirds as much as he or she would in America. However, German doctors pay much less for malpractice insurance, and many attend medical school for free. Germany also lets the richest 10 percent opt out of the sickness funds in favor of U.S.-style for-profit insurance. These patients are generally seen more quickly by doctors, because the for-profit insurers pay doctors more than the sickness funds.

Taiwan

National Health Insurance model

In the 1990s, Taiwan researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government collects the money and pays providers. But the delivery of health care is left to the market. Every person in Taiwan has a “smart card” containing all of his or her relevant health information, and bills are paid automatically. But the Taiwanese are spending too little to sustain their health care system, according to Princeton’s Tsung-mei Cheng, who advised the Taiwanese government. “As we speak, the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn’t enough to pay the providers,” she told FRONTLINE.

In the 1990s, Taiwan researched many health care systems before settling on one where the government collects the money and pays providers. But the delivery of health care is left to the market. Taiwan adopted a National Health Insurance model in 1995 after studying other countries’ systems. Like Japan and Germany, all citizens must have insurance, but there is only one government-run insurer. Working people pay premiums split with their employers; others pay flat rates with government help; and some groups, like the poor and veterans, are fully subsidized. The resulting system is similar to Canada’s and the U.S. Medicare program. Taiwan’s new health system extended insurance to the 40 percent of the population that lacked it while actually decreasing the growth of health care spending. The Taiwanese can see any doctor without a referral. Every citizen in Taiwan has a smart card, which is used to store his or her relevant health information, medical history and bills the national insurer automatically. The system also helps public health officials monitor standards and effect policy changes nationwide. Thanks to this use of technology and the country’s single insurer, Taiwan’s health care system has the lowest administrative costs in the world. But the Taiwanese are spending too little to sustain their health care system and the government is borrowing from banks to pay what there isn’t enough to pay the providers. The problem is compounded by politics, because it is up to Taiwan’s parliament to approve an increase in insurance premiums, which it has only done once since the program was enacted.

Watch

Germany

Taiwan

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