The Pros And Cons Of The Dutch Healthcare System

Ultimately, the Dutch healthcare system is a very practical system to possible be instituted within the US, but lacks one key aspect that would drastically increase the efficiency of the system. Currently the Dutch health system is attempting to establish complexly electronic file but currently they are not complete and thus the national health system lags behind France and Germany that both have completely electronic health records and payment and thus with over 300,000,000 citizens to coordinate care for, it is more intelligent to have electronic records. This is why France and Germany are slightly more practical for the United States to reduce complexity. To the immediate south-east lies, according to the World Health Organization, the

Much like how US healthcare operates today, there is no Gatekeeper system in place in France where citizen are required to be evaluated by a General Practitioner prior to seeing a specialist(). There is however, an incentive for citizen to first see a GP. If the citizen see a GP and then is refereed to ta specialist insurance will cover seventy percent of the bill where if not only sixty percent is covered (Reid 54). Yet, a key issue with the current US system is the fact that it does not possess a gatekeeper system and thus care is often uncoordinated. According to Thomas Bodenheimer in his textbook, Understanding Health Policy, the key task of primary care (thus GPs) is: one, be the first point of contact, two, to be longitudinal, three, to be comprehensive, and fouth, to coordinate the care of the patient. Therefore, if the United States wished to adopt a system similar to the French then it would be intelligent to alter it by adding a gatekeeper like system to properly coordinate the care of patients and thus reduce the total cost of care in the long

Healthcare is guaranteed to all eight-two million citizen as well as to visitors and “guest workers legal or not” (Reid 67). The care delivered is completely comprehensive with very small cost to the citizens. Much like how the United States and France currently offer healthcare, employers offer and pay the bulk of the cost (Reid 70). However, unique to the German system patients pay a monthly adjustable fee of fifteen percent of their income (Reid 74). Furthermore at the time of Reid’s book, citizens had to pay the equivalent of $13.00 per quarter before the comprehensive health insurance would kick in (Reid 77). Therefore, this provides a small disincentive for individuals to overuse the service just because it is free while also making it affordable enough that individuals still seek care if they require