Thoughts?

Why Switzerland Has the World's Best Health Care System - Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/04/29/why-switzerland-has-the-worlds-best-health-care-system/)

They're a rich nation, with almost the longest-lived citizenry. While people must buy insurance, and insurers are regulated, they have an extremely wide set of options, and almost all the insurance is bought completely by private citizens - no employer and very little government bought insurance.

I'm not convinced that health insurance has a whole lot to do with health. The message has gotten hosed up by the Obamacare proponents: "we have a right to health insurance." No, actually you don't. You may have a right to health care, but not health insurance.

There are other factors that go into being a "healthy" country. Do the Swiss eat like we do and lay on their butts playing video games and watching Jersey Shore? What is their obesity rate? Do they smoke? Do they get regular exercise? How about drug use and crime?

Perhaps their health care system isn't as burdened as ours?

I'm not convinced that health insurance has a whole lot to do with health. The message has gotten hosed up by the Obamacare proponents: "we have a right to health insurance." No, actually you don't. You may have a right to health care, but not health insurance.

There are other factors that go into being a "healthy" country. Do the Swiss eat like we do and lay on their butts playing video games and watching Jersey Shore? What is their obesity rate? Do they smoke? Do they get regular exercise? How about drug use and crime?

Perhaps their health care system isn't as burdened as ours?

Also to consider is their population. A large majority of their population is from one ethnic group..germanic, I believe. They have very little in the way of diversity there. what works for a largely similar and homogenous population is not going to be translateable to our extremely diverse nation. Add to that the number of people who come to this country for their care and the other "lifestyle" differences, there can absolutely be no comparing the two.

and as you say..healthcare is not health insurance. Though its obvious that with a generally healthy population like the swiss, insurance is naturally going to be less expensive. They are going to have a better market just by virtue of it being a low risk country.

I got this article via a link on Ron Miller's Facebook page (amazing, I don't get all my stuff from FOX and Drudge). As such, I have commented before that SOME things are less simple to scale from a small country which is not ethnically diverse; not geographically large; does not spend hardly anything on defense; and is simply a small population.

Thus it doesn't surprise me at all to see stats showing things like worker productivity or quality of living indexes favoring very small countries. Sometimes, doubling the size of a program quadruples its complexity.

Still, there were aspects that intrigued me. One thing we honestly do NOT have is serious competition across states. That being the case, some insurances companies are NOT available to me.

Some things troubled me, which is why I need to look more into it. For example, my first reading through - if I recall correctly - the government requires insurances to be non-profits and controls prices requirements.

I was a little surprised to see Paul Ryan's name mentioned as having suggested a similar alternative. There seriously must be more to the guy than I even thought before.

Switzerland has a tough immigration policy and doesn't share a border with Mexico. Those are 2 things that successful countries usually have in common.