38 minutes to understanding why their healthcare is better than ours

I don’t often get to listen to Terry Gross’ Fresh Air on NPR these days, but fortunately on Monday I had a chance listen to Terry’s guest T.R.Reid, author of the book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare.

Mr. Reid is a journalist who has worked on three continent and has had an up close look at healthcare across the world.  Mr. Reid starts the interview explaining how the term “socialized medicine” was created by a PR firm in the 1940’s.  He can a really interesting quote after that.

The amazing thing is it’s still a powerful argument. I don’t know that anybody can define socialize medicine, but nobody seems to like it, except, Terry, when Americans get government-run medicine, they really like it.

The VA, the Native American Health Service and Medicare are the three most popular health care systems in America, all run by government.

Another great quote from the interview ,  “All over the world, people say that. If you complain about health care, they say ‘well, you want to move to America? You think that’s better?'”

This conversation (as most are with Terry) is fascinating.  Reid easily breaks down the myths associated with foreign healthcare, and how America is behind all other “rich democracies” when it comes to health. Listen to the audio above or check out the transcript of Reid and Gross’ discussion for easy compare/contrast.