Israel’s Health Care Outpaces U.S.
The heated debate over health care reform, reignited by the Supreme Court’s impending ruling on President Barack Obama’s plan, has drawn attention, once again, to the issue of government involvement in health care management and the effectiveness of a system based on universal coverage.
For Israel, this is a Rubicon crossed long ago. Despite the country’s mania for most things American, when it comes to health care, Israel chose a system based more on the European model. The government’s role is central as both funder and regulator. Yet, going by many indexes of health outcomes, the result in terms of quality of care is often better — and definitely cheaper than in the U.S. Under the Israeli system, the percentage of the country’s gross domestic product going to health care is less than half that of the United States. And coverage is universal.
Stephen Reingold has observed both systems from up close. He is a pediatrician who practiced medicine in New Jersey before moving to Israel in 2009, where he now sees patients in Modi’in.
“One of the first things I noticed in the emergency room was that we only got severe cases,” Reingold recalled of the time he spent at an Israeli children’s hospital. The reason, he later learned, was that “hey, people here have a doctor to go to” and therefore do not end up in the hospital for minor problems, even if they are poor.