Though we have to admit there are some small steps toward an improving in general health care, we’ve expressed our opinion about how bad things are on numerous occasions. Only the fact that major pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than research is a huge problem, that (along with others) leads to a domino-like effect with a result that’s not good for anybody. Almost anybody, at least.

A study conducted in 21 countries analyzing the health care systems and the prospects of improvement in this area led to dire conclusions. I’m not really sure what these 21 countries are (just a few of them, for example the U.S.), but I’d bet they didn’t go deep into Africa for this study. The findings were published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

“Our findings explain, to the dismay of many who would like to see more radical change in the U.S., why President-elect Obama’s campaign proposal regarding health care reform was pretty much a center proposal, compared to Sen. McCain’s to the right,” said Indiana University sociologist Bernice Pescosolido. “Why didn’t Obama’s go farther toward considering a state model? In normal times, societies can only tolerate systems that match their understanding of what a health care system should look like. It showed an understanding of the tolerance for change.”
“People are socialized into a contract that is essentially established between the state and the citizens of this country, and they come to believe that this is the best way to do it,” Pescosolido said. “Even though there are similar pressures on health care systems around the world, politicians really have to deal with public pressure, which is local, and this is going to produce different pathways to health care reform in other countries.”

Here are just a few findings:

Across the board respondents supported the idea that the government should “definitely be responsible for health care,” with some countries showing more support than others. Respondents from the U.S. were least likely to agree that the government should be responsible for health care, with 38.1 percent indicating support. Eighty percent or more of respondents in Slovenia, U.K., Spain, Italy, Russia, Latvia and Norway reported that the government should be responsible for health care.
Levels of support for the government “definitely spending much more on health care,” appeared in clusters, with U.S. respondents again being toward the bottom, with only 17.5 percent of respondents supporting this notion. Support from Canadian and French respondents ranged from 14.2 percent to 17 percent, with 19.9 percent of Germans supporting this idea. These countries tended to have insurance models of health care. On the other end of the spectrum, countries with centralized models of health care, such as Russia and Latvia, showed 64.2 percent and 53.2 percent support for the idea of increased spending, respectively.

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