The Health Care System I Want Is in France

PARIS April 15, 2008 — -- Shortly after we moved to Paris, my son, Luke, cut his lip in a fall at school. I rushed him to the emergency room of a suburban Paris hospital, where a nurse asked my name and address and a doctor quickly stitched up his cut. When I tried to pay, the cashier asked me to call the following week because the "computer is slow." A bill eventually arrived in the mail for the equivalent of $60.

The same week I took Luke to have his stitches removed at a clinic where a doctor spent nearly an hour with him first softening a scab on the cut. This time, the clerk was apologetic as she handed me the bill, explaining she was sure my American health insurance would reimburse some of the cost. The total bill: $7.50.

As presidential candidates hammer out proposals to deal with the increasing millions of uninsured Americans, I know which health plan I'll choose: the French one.

The World Health Organization has named the French health care system the best in the world. (The U.S. ranked 37th). It's physician-rich, boasting one doctor for approximately every 430 people, compared with a doctor for every1,230 residents in the U.S. (and French docs tend to charge significantly less). The average life expectancy is two years longer than the U.S. And while the system is one of the most expensive in the world, costing $3,500 per person, it's far less than the $6,100 spend per capita in the U.S.

I've had a unique opportunity to see both systems up close and personal: I had breast cancer in California nine years ago and a recurrence in Paris this year. I received excellent care in both places, though looking back now my California oncologist's office was a bit of a meat market — always packed with patients, from the seemingly not-so-sick to some a step from the grave — a time-consuming disadvantage of living in a much larger country with a lower doctor-to-patient ratio.

My French doctors and nurses have been sensitive, skillful, caring — and not so harried.

But the biggest difference has been money.