Joshua Holland: Why Does Europe Take Better Care of Its People Than America?

In many ways, what makes America different from other advanced democracies are relatively modest differences in priorities: While all wealthy democracies share the same basic model, deriving the bulk of their economic activity from the private sector, while offering some form of social safety net for those who fall between the cracks, even slight differences in priorities can have a huge impact on the lives of their people: Here are 9 countries that do a better job of providing for their citizens than we do: France, which has a health-care system ranked number one in the world by the WHO (World Health Organization), NOT the rock group, spent 11.2 percent of its economy to cover everyone. One statistic that that stands out: In the European economies, upward of 70 percent of total health care is picked up by the government, meaning that people are insured in large pools with lots of bargaining clout to hold down provider's costs. In the US, less than half of our health care is in the public sector, resulting in a patchwork system of private insurers with much higher administrative costs. When you plug what France pays per person for health care into our own government's fiscal projections, you get balanced budgets by around 2014, which then turn into surpluses after 2040. At around 12 percent, the United States doesn't have the lowest unionization rate among the "wealthy countries". That distinction goes to France, where under 8 percent of the workforce belongs to a union!