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France's model heath care for new mommies

  2. J_Jammer
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Morning Edition, July 10, 2008 ยท Mary Lou Sarazin went to Paris to teach. When the job ended, she was newly married to a French husband and pregnant. Her visa had expired, however, and she couldn't renew it right away, so she returned to New York a little over a year ago to finish graduate school and have the baby.

Sarazin, 34, has since received health care in both France and the United States. Her experience has given her a firsthand look into why France has earned a reputation for being a good place to be pregnant and have a child.

In New York, pregnant and unable to find work, Sarazin couldn't find health insurance that she could afford. Eventually, she did get limited coverage through New York Medicaid, the state program for the poor and uninsured, but it only covered her prenatal and hospital care. Once the baby was born, she would be uninsured again.

"I just felt like when I was in New York, it was always stress, stress, stress," she says. "I just didn't like the care I was receiving. And I didn't want to stress out about something I shouldn't have to stress out, not at the time of my pregnancy."

----WAY more at the link. You may choose to read it or listen. It clocks in at 8 minutes. It's a great article and gives way to thinking. I believe that every Country has something uniquely awesome about them that if all countries took something from each other the world would most defiantly become better....and in this case the French know their mommies.
J_Jammer

32 responses // France's model heath care for new mommies

  • When the "healthcare" system cares more about money than about health, shouldn't it technically be called a "moneycare" system that simply uses health as the catalyst for profit?

    France obviously wins hands down, but it's possible there are many things about their culture that made the experience more pleasant above and beyond just the healthcare.

    You're right that we should start taking pages out of playbooks from countries that are doing better than we are.
    recommended by  huntre, stopnoise
    damnneargenius
  • Indeed. I don't understand why we can't applaud another nation's sucesses where we're clearly failing miserably, AND not be labeled as "unpatriotic"
    jjeziorski
  • Great post JJ.
    rightbrain
  • Someone in one of my Classes did a report comparing European healthcare to American healthcare. I was told that Europe has a population shortage do to the fact that women want to start families later on in their lives so they can focus on careers. I guess the French government wants to encourage them to start families early by offering them some type of payment, because they get paid to be stay-at-home moms. I don't know all the facts but this what I was told.
    shun21
  • Thanks for the post JJ!
    stopnoise
  • Nice info. Thanks.
    onechance
  • Watch Sicko! A lot of countries are better than ours.
    shroomfairy
  • My wife and I had a baby boy on Monday August 4th. I am so happy that he was born in America. I am not knocking any other country, I just love the USA. The idea of the Government being in control of something as serious as childbirth scares me.
    mjsmith11
  • An unfortunately typical situation. Luckily, there were no complications, she might have been screwed if that happened.
    Saladin
  • mjs, french government is not controlling childbirth!! stop that parano!
    it simply try to give best help for new family, health and finance support, France simply helping families to have healthy and happy baby!
    What's wrong!
    You may have enough money to care alone for your child, good for you but that's not everybody luck, so what for your other poorer fellow American or you don't care!
    alexandrek
    2 responses to this
  • Sure the far right wants to promote the grim specter of socialized medicine, but a privatized revenue based health care system is just as unhealthy.
    We need the best of both worlds.
    rightbrain
    1 response to this
  • Great pod. I really think that there is a better solution to our health care. But, you are right that money is the driving force behind our present system. Insurance companies control alot of our medical practice as it is.
    cibalin
  • having a similar healthcare for US would cost what, 10 max 20% of your defense budget!
    Money is there, just wrongly used! a better balance of budget might be a very easy solution!

    Everybody should be allow to health care!
    this is 21st century, nobody should be left sick or dying alone!
    alexandrek
  • The USA's a Free Country,

    Free without a doubt.

    If you don't have health insurance

    Then you're free to go without.
    trinna13
  • The problem with this country is money. That is all anyone cares about. Screw each other and the enviroment, it's money that makes the world go 'round, at least in their eyes.
    wisher40
  • The bad thing about this is the small paragraph towards the end of the article (or last bit of the pod) states that France is in the hole billions because of health care.....though it is good they don't know how to allocate money.

    Welcome to all who enjoyed this. I love NPR.
    J_Jammer
  • Being in NYC could have been a root of the problem. Here in south jersey, being pregnant gives you healthcare plus another 3-6 months of healthcare for yourself. A city such as NY has alot of people living off of medicaid and welfare. though some need it some also dont.

    The reason why Europe has healthcare that works is because it is done by countries that are roughly the size of our states. (compare england to pennsylvania) Canada has a population per capita alot lower than ours. Not only does federalization ruin just about anything it touches, but we are better off doing our govt healthcare state by state.
    regjoeschmo
  • J Jammer
    Yes that system is plunging French finance, can still support it, but better that way then in blackwater, halliburton iraq or other Gov special pharaonic spending!
    alexandrek
  • Freedom and Independence are ideological stages of being. We humans are not free in the sense of the word neither independent. On the contrary, we are all dependent on each others and the World will change for the better when we stop denying and start to acknowledging that. Think about it, if we were that independent we did not need oxygen to survive. That is your first degree of physical dependence on the Earth natural resources right there. However we can be "as free as possible" and we can be "independent as possible."
    stopnoise
  • if you like it so much the healthcare move there and become a french citizen
    TexasPatriot67
    1 response to this
  • no one would do that.
    clayjj05
  • I'm going to sit here, uninsured and overweight, eating my Freedom Fries and my Freedom Toast, and say, NO THANK YOU! Good health care is for the frogs. Humph!
    recommended by  CarolynGillis
    SDLN
  • Ah blissful ignorance. If you want socialized healthcare, you will get a very similar system to the U.S. Military's system which is completely socialized. And it's utterly abominable. Sort of like when you speak to lots of U.Kers who laughed out loud at Micael Moore's terrible documentary.

    Those of you who think the government is competent enough for this have CLEARLY never worked for the government.
    gmmay
  • http://www.narsil.org/politics/CEO_pay.png
    Our government does a good job at our Fire Departments and Police Departments and schools..our libraries..Post Office..not without fault but I enjoy all of those things. We could have health care also but all our money is being diverted by the Insurance companies.
    We are being had as we speak. ..
    CarolynGillis
    1 response to this
  • FYI, our federal government does not run fire departments and police departments and schools and libraries.

    And the wonderful performance of those entities is clearly subject to debate depending on the community in which you reside.
    gmmay
  • Sadly, many have taken their focus off of the fact that in the United States, THE problem is that the government is robbing it's citizens of purchasing power and also enacting/adhering to policies that produce skyrocketing prices in healthcare, college tuitions, etc. If only we had a government that was an enemy (rather than a bedfellow) of corporatism and allowed the free market to function.
    Hawkmang
  • well, i had to read the linked article because the header felt misleading.

    she returned to france to have the baby because she couldn't get health care in the US.

    in france, what she received was subsidized and discounted, but OF COURSE, the npr narrative never said ONE WORD about who pays the difference between the "sticker price" and the "out the door price" of her coverage, medicine and insurance....

    it's everyone in france.

    who else? "the government"???? are any of you so dumb as to not realize that the "government" NEVER pays for ANYTHING?????

    it takes citizens' taxes, rakes off a bureaucratic overhead, and distributes the money to them that want it or lobby the loudest.

    france has one of the lowest productivity levels in the world. as they continue down this path, they will eventually bankrupt themselves, as Hawkmang has alluded.

    and then, what will happen. in bankruptcy, nobody gets paid. the government has NO money to pay for ANY subsidized medicine, insurance, coverage, baby care or ANYTHING, and the more they supply, the faster they approach the cliff.

    but it's a nice idea, and a warm, fuzzy feeling, to think that somewhere [over the rainbow,] you can get something for cheap and "nobody suffers as a result."

    dorothy, your return to Kansas and reality will be a shocker.

    in the meantime, party hearty!
    obviously, about 70% of the readers here think france has the right idea.
    plusaf

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