FREE Film Series: Sick Around the World, Wed. 6/24/09 7pm

DFA-Tucson Summer Film Series & Discussions: Sick Around the World

When: Wednesday, June 24th, at 7 pm

Cost: FREE

Where:
Conference Room, Ward 6 Office, 3201 E. 1st St., Tucson, AZ

Contact: 777-7190, (215 ) 292- 2019, or aherodias.1 @ netzero.net (spaces removed)

Length: 50 minutes

PBS interview with T.R. Reid.

Originally aired on PBS's FRONTLINE, Sick Around the World chronicles reporter T. R. Reid's travels to five capitalist nations that use a single-payer health finance system - to get treatment for his "bum shoulder". In each country, he gains information from health professionals who are part of a private system financed with public dollars.

"In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies -- the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland -- deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures.

Reid's first stop is the U.K., where the government-run National Health Service (NHS) is funded through taxes. "Every single person who's born in the U.K. will use the NHS," says Whittington Hospital CEO David Sloman, "and none of them will be presented a bill at any point during that time." Often dismissed in America as "socialized medicine," the NHS is now trying some free-market tactics like "pay-for-performance," where doctors are paid more if they get good results controlling chronic diseases like diabetes. And now patients can choose where they go for medical procedures, forcing hospitals to compete head to head."

Comparison of countries on health care, click here.

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