Praise and damnation. Both are heaped on the socialized health care systems of Europe by partisans in the American health care reform debate. “Hooray for the French,” say fans of a single payer system (and the World Health Organization, which rates France’s system as the best in the world). “French medicine sucks!” reply the anti-reformers, staunch defenders of the status quo.
So, what gives? Is French medicine any good or not? Is America really the best place in the world to get sick, or have we been conned?
Well, most of us can’t pack up, head off to Paris and look in on sick French people ourselves. So, we’ve got to leave it to folks like CBS News to take their cameras and come back with pictures. It’s the closest we can come to seeing for ourselves.
So, here you go. You be the judge.
