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By world standards, the Dutch are wealthy and healthy, but the country's changing. With each year, it's home to more Dutch elderly and more young immigrants from the developing world.
The queen opened a parliament once again wrestling over health care, still trying to contain costs after a massive overhaul designed four years ago.
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It is quality journalism, for a number of reasons. While there are those on both sides of the political fence who are generally against "government-run" news, agencies like PBS and NPR are funded in part by goverment funds, and are largely independent. In a highly charged political climate where media analysts are growingly concerned about commercial media and cable channels spending too much time covering the politics and not informing people of the actual issues, PBS in general, and the News Hour does not have to answer to commercial sponsors whose main interest has become ratings. Without commercial interruption PBS has time on their side and can delegate 9:30 to a story like this and rightly so. On any commercial channel you would be lucky to get two minutes of coverage - they couldn't cover a story like this, short of special coverage or a news magazine show. Specifically, the reporter on this story takes the time to cover all angles and present the relevant facts and statistics to show why the new Netherlands health care system has improved the system and the lives of it's citizens by working through a complicated overhaul of their method of covering health care costs.
“Insurance companies have to compete, consumers can choose which ever company they prefer , or change companies whenever they choose and cannot be refused. No refusals for pre-existing conditions. If a patient chooses to go to another insurance company, they can’t be turned down or be charged higher premiums.”
The government officials and insurance company executives interviewed in this story continued to stress that the system works by relying on quality through competition, not lower or high prices.
I believe the commercial news media outlets, most of them on television, have lost credibility not just on this issue but in the minds of a growing percentage of United States citizens. The politically inspired and often paid for protests against any change in health care coverage in the U.S. compare European health care models with vague labels, ('socialized medicine, Socialism, Communism." The Netherlands government is a monarchy and the Queen worked with Parliament to overhaul the health care system there in 2006. While so many on the left are convinced of the need of a "single payor" system with the government footing most of the bill, it interests me that in a series of such detailed stories on how other countries provide health care, reporter Ray Suarez shows how the Netherlands chose to hand everything over to the insurance companies, but regulated the system in a way that the insurance companies could not refuse coverage, has to offer coverage to everyone at the same price, and can't turn away so-called "high risk" patients, the Netherlands government subsidizes costs for insurance companies who take consumers who are very sick or are at high risk. So, through this system the government is involved and spends money through subsidization. The bottom line? The average health care consumer in the Netherlands pays less than one-half of the average cost in the U.S. and the Netherlands has a longer life expectancy, according to this report, and lower infant mortality rates, while paying "about 7% of an average consumer's annual income on health care.