What is it about the Austrian health care system that make it FAR superior to ours? Please explain.[/quote]
One example would be my mom’s best friend who had to have hip replacement surgery. In Austria, she got the surgery and had a longer hospital stay than U.S. counterparts (a good thing, no matter what they try to tell us), then was sent to a rehab facility (again, an in-patient facility) that is more like a spa, with special pools and massage therapies, etc. Essentially, they believe in a more holistic approach; and rather than send someone home the same day or day after a major procedure, they actually try to **heal** the patient, and make sure they are able to take care of themselves at home. We do no such thing here.
Another benefit of socialized medicine is that people can move freely between employers and careers. For example, my husband and I would like to start a business, but can’t because we’d lose the health benefits provided by his current employer. Socialized medicine would allow labor to move where it is most effective, and would enable our employers to be more competitive with foreign employers who do not have the burden of insuring their employees and the related “legacy costs.”
One more thing… A for-profit healthcare system is only profitable when people are sick. There is no incentive to **cure** people, only to “treat” them with expensive medicines and procedures. Ideally, from the perspective of a for-profit healthcare provider, the perfect patient is one who is chronically ill and requires medicine and treatments for an entire lifetime.
A socialized system has an incentive to **cure,** because the entire goal of socialized medicine is to make people healthy, irrespective of any other (profit) considerations.
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More general statements about their socialized government:
The Austrians pay about the same amount in taxes that we do, and get 12-18 months **paid** maternity leave (combination of govt/employer-paid, with one year full pay and 6 months half pay, IIRC).
They get very effective healthcare which will not bankrupt them.
They also get a pension when they retire.
They do not have the disparate levels of wealth that we have, and, generally-speaking, everyone is taken care of. Certainly nobody can take issue with the German or Austrian work ethic, either. The whole boogeyman of “everyone will be lazy” is nonsense.
