What does our health care system look like to the rest of the world?
The United States is the only industrialized country without universal health care. This was a frequent source of disbelief at dinner parties during the several years I spent living in Europe and Asia. The other dinner guests would pelt me with questions: "What is the difference between a P.P.O. and an H.M.O.?" "How can the richest nation on Earth have such impoverishing deductibles and exorbitant drug costs?" "Why do Americans have to travel to Canada to buy insulin?" Admittedly, I didn't get invited to the most interesting dinner parties. |
I've often been fascinated with how the world views America — in all our glory and, too frequently, in all our shame. |
We spend absurd amounts of money per capita on health care, yet the results, like average life expectancy, can be shockingly mediocre. This tragic reality is, in part, the inspiration for the newest episode from our series "The World Reacts," which we published this morning. |
Produced by Chai Dingari, Adam Westbrook and Brendan Miller, the video's intention is to present a form of cultural commentary. In a pandemic year, when the entire world has been trying to manage the same crisis, it feels especially useful to maintain an outsider's perspective — critical eye included — on one's own country. The series is also inspired by my belief that traveling offers lessons on other ways of life, and in that way challenges the norms and assumptions that govern one's own life. |
For this latest episode, Times Opinion's video team pulled together data, charts, photos, videos and anecdotes that revealed certain unfortunate realities about the American health care system. Then we presented the information to people around the world and recorded their reactions, which ranged from astonishment to horror, anger to disgust. |
The videos in the series, I think, are a more journalistically rigorous version of the popular genre of YouTube video known as the "reaction video." I also like to think of them as live experiments in storytelling, and we plan to do more of that. Previous episodes in the series dissected America's egregious response to Covid-19 and the undemocratic American voting system, and we'll be publishing more episodes on policing and the response to climate change in America in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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