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Mimi Nolan's avatar

Theresa happy holidays !! You look on top of the world ! What a rush !! Hope you are soaking all that goodness up !

You look like you are !!!

Cheers and safe travels

Excellent , thought provoking writing !!love it!!!

Always

My best

Mimi

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Mari, the Happy Wanderer's avatar

Thank you for writing this excellent and important column. Our family has received excellent health care in four countries that provide universal coverage—Czechia, Switzerland, the UK (for our son), and France (after a bad fall from an e-bike while on vacation). These four countries have four different systems, ranging from government-funded single payer (the UK) to fully private, with no government insurance at all (Switzerland). But what unites them is that healthcare is exclusively nonprofit. Even in Switzerland, all the insurance companies are private nonprofits and are strictly regulated.

I think this is the key difference between the crappy system in the US and the mostly functional systems everywhere else in the developed world. The profit motive is far too corrupting: it skims off money that ought to go to care and hands it over to rich shareholders instead; incentivizes doctors to run unnecessary tests, perform unnecessary procedures, and prescribe unnecessary drugs in order to make money; causes hospitals to lie about which treatments are covered, leaving patients stuck with outrageous bills; and pushes insurance companies to deny legitimate claims in order to save money.

On another note, those are fantastic pictures from Easter Island. What an adventure!

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