What the Dutch are Doing With Healthcare
Two months ago I traveled to the Netherlands and experienced the culture and beauty of this small European country. My first stop was to Amsterdam, arguably the most liberal city I have ever seen from a social standpoint. The promotion of the red light district is shameful and watching young men and women waist away smoking Pot in “coffee shops” is somewhat hard to believe.
Yet, the country is beautiful, and our recent history is tied together from the 20th century. You can see today in Washington D.C (the Virginia side) a beautiful bell tower donated by the citizens of the Netherlands for our efforts in World War II.
Beyond the classic old windmills (only about 900 of them left), it is amazing that they are bucking the current movement in healthcare regarding socialized medicine. In 2006 The Netherlands passed a bill “The Health Insurance Act of 2006” which took a centralized (social medicine) and turned it back into an American form to an extent of healthcare. In other words, they privatized the system. Today, private insurance companies cover the citizens for profit. Ahh, that evil profit the Dems hate so badly, but it works. The Dutch have been innovative in trying to undo the socialism failures and to implement a market based system.
I found a great article below, which tells more about the Dutch system and stats on some of the European countries. It’s worth reading and noting that maybe in America we just need to fix what is wrong with our system, instead of revamping the whole process.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/847hvjdk.asp?pg=2
As the article reports from a study “that the percentage of the respondents in need of elective coronary bypass surgery who had been waiting for more than three months was 0% in U.S., 18.2% in Sweden, 46.7% in Canada, and 88.9% in the United Kingdom”, which indicates European medicine may not be what cures America.