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>a baseline level of widely available cheap care and an expensive tier for people who'd pay anything to get quick care We sort of have this in Croatia, public
by moonchrome 3y ago
>a baseline level of widely available cheap care and an expensive tier for people who'd pay anything to get quick care
We sort of have this in Croatia, public care and a lot of private options. It's not that great because :
- There is a tension with public system where doctors from public care move to private system, you hear about doctors working at a private clinics while they are on shift in public hospital, or referring you to their private clinic if you want to get treatment in reasonable amount of time
- Private clinics usually don't cover everything, they focus on the profitable stuff. Like we had two smaller earthquakes (~5) around the time my wife was pregnant and both times they were evacuating pregnant women out in the street because the public hospital buildings are >100 years old. Private option was expensive and in case of complications they would still need to ambulance you to a general hospital
- Medical tourism eats up private capacity - this is kind of a mixed thing because medical tourism also keeps the field growing/investing much more than domestic demand alone would
- naasking 3y agoThere's another consideration too: the wealthy people stop caring about funding the public tier because they can afford not to care about it, lobby for policies to cut public funding to lower taxes. Two tier systems typically degrade the public tier over time.
- moonchrome 3y agoI'd say wealthy people don't use the public option anyway/get top tier institutions.
- naasking 3y agoDepends. There is rarely a private ER, and as you say, private care will often focus on the higher margin items so the lower margin stuff might be left to the public option. Some countries forbid two tier systems entirely for this reason, like here in Canada.