Sacre Blue! Universal healthcare going broke in France

One quick disclaimer: We hate France. We hate the French. We hate Napoleon. We hate DeGaulle. We have Charles Aznavour. We hate Jerry Lewis just because the French love him. We like Carla Bruni, but only because she’s hot.

That being said, France’s friggin’ healthcare system has been held up as the perfect example, the ideal, the epitome of what America’s healthcare should look like. So it is with great pleasure that we pass along this report from the Wall Street Journal:

“… soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics.

In recent months, France imposed American-style “co-pays” on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses. “A hospital doesn’t need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment,” President Nicolas Sarkozy thundered in a recent speech to doctors.

And service cuts — such as the closure of a maternity ward near Ms. Cuccarolo’s home — are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing.

The French system’s fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama’s proposed overhaul.

French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and patients get treatment even if they can’t pay for it. France spends 11% of national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.

The problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.

Fabulous. If President Obama has his way we’ll have a healthcare system just like the French. It’ll be ugly as Charles DeGaulle, expensive as Bridget Bardot, and effective as the French army.

Source: Wall Street Journal