List of Industrialized Countries

Free-market countries: 30** as per the OECD,

... and their status regarding universal health care,
health care for all.

(Countries) classified as low-income
Countries without health care for all (universal healthcare).

** The above 30 free-market industrialized countries are the set of countries referenced at this website. They are the 30 that joined the OECD during the time period of 1961 through 2009. See the OECD website to see their current list.

 

Observations

All other free-market countries, including the ones that are classified as low-income, have some kind of health care for all, universal health care, system. For a large majority of those countries, 98% to 100% of their citizens have access to health care.

The United States has a health care NOT for all system, and its national Congress has had no intention, plan or desire to provide all Americans with access to health care.

The temptation is strong in some people that we need to study what other countries have done regarding health-care-for-all. That's been done. However, it hardly matters for multiple reasons:

1) Different countries have different cultures and different situations.

2) Americans often like to come up with their own solution.

3) Health care for all is primarily a matter of implementing efficiency to get more and pay less for the amount of money that is spent. The H.R. 676 proposal for single-payer health care, Improved Medicare for All, would establish the highest degree of efficiency and, therefore, the best health care for all system.

Considering the need to establish efficiency, the uniquely American solution is obvious, so we need to take action with common sense:

— Efficiency is maximized when there is only one place at which to pool our money and only one place from which to pay the bills. That one place is one public fund: a "single payer".

— Efficiency is maximized when there is only one health care plan.

— Efficiency is maximized when there is only one purchaser of drugs and equipment and the prices are negotiated.

Refer to this website to help achieve our uniquely-American solution that is the best.

More About the 30 Free-Market Countries

The thirty countries are typically called “free-market countries” or “industrialized countries”. The countries joined the OECD (explained below) during the time period 1961 through 2009. The OECD is an excellent source of statistical information about the 30 countries. OECD is based on countries with a market-oriented ideology. Twenty-eight of the thirty are high-income countries. Among the 30 countries that are referenced at this website, most of them have some form of health care for all, as per the many implementations of health care for all systems. It is time for the U.S. to cut the unnecessary administrative costs and all unnecessary functions from our health care bureaucracy. We need efficiency through simplicity. We need to catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to being efficient in paying for health care and caring for citizens.

Source: the OECD

The list of countries is the set of member countries of the OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which provides statistical information for this set of countries. If you are interested, go to the OECD website to see which countries have been added since 2009, but the amount of available data on those additional countries might be very limited.

Additional Information

There has been a world-wide expansion of the use of national health insurance that was largely completed in the mid-1970’s. The United States has not participated; the U.S. Congress and/or the U.S. President has rejected the idea over and over again, as seen at that web page.

Through 2012 Americans never communicated in massive numbers that they want Improved Medicare for All in order to establish what the politicians’ call the “political will” for establishing it. This website and its associated campaign are a foundation with which that situation can change.

There are multiple ways of identifying “industrialized countries” or “developed countries” or “advanced economies.” As done for this website, one of those ways is to refer to OECD, an organization which gathers and reports information for the 30 countries.

Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, is scheduled to be implemented by 2018 and was estimated about the time of its passage in 2010 to leave roughly 20 to 40 million Americans uninsured.

 

Accessing PDF Files

If selecting a link for a pdf file does not cause a download of the document to your computer, then you may need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer. You can download a free copy by clicking on the following image: