Health Care in France—and in America : CJR

Health Care in France—and in America : CJR: "Welcome back to America, I said to myself after a two-week trip to France. Yes, I did think about health care while I was away—all that rhetoric about the U.S. and its “best” health care in the world, and the French and their “socialistic” system. Traveling abroad always brings up the medical what-ifs—an accident, a sudden illness, the need for a doctor in the middle of the night. In France, though, I was hardly worried. Patient satisfaction with medical care here is among the highest of any western European country. The French have a higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and lower costs than we do. In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the French system the best in the world. The U.S. ranked thirty-seventh."