you wanted to call it), how does it change the quality of health care we have access to?

Generally my thoughts have always been that the quality of care we can get will likely go down. That opinion has been generally tied to the fact that providing healthcare would be less profitable, and the resulting economics would lead to lower quality providers available.

This morning I had an interesting experience that showed another significant problem that would drive down the quality of care available. We've hosted a number of exchange students from Europe over the years who all come from countries where health care is provided in a government-run program. We have a student from Spain living with us this year. She came down with the flu over the weekend, so we took her to an urgent care and got her a Tamiflu prescription on Saturday.

When I woke up this morning around 5:30, she was in the living room sitting on the couch waiting for me. She informed me that she had thrown up around 4:00 a.m., and had been waiting for me to get up since then so I could take her to the hospital. I tried to explain that we don't usually go to the hospital in America when we get the flu. Instead, we rest and drink lots of fluids. If we get dehydrated, then we go in and get an IV to restore fluids. I pointed out that she already has a tamiflu prescription, and she's going to get to feeling better in a couple of day.

From the way she reacted, you would have thought I had shot her grandma. She kept saying that when you throw up, you always have to go to the hospital so that the doctors can take care of you. Apparently this is what they do in Spain where she's from. We had a similar experience with a previous student from the Netherlands. The first time you get an ache or pain or show signs of sickness, they immediately want you to take them to the hospital and stay there until they get feeling better.

I guess if you don't pay for health care, you'll use it more. From my experience with our European exchange students, it looks like they use it so often to the point where they're putting unnecessary strains on the health care system and using services that are not remotely needed. I can begin to understand why it takes 4 months to get an MRI or 3 years waiting on a surgery list. Scarce medical resources are being diverted to unnecessary cases. I intellectually knew this, but it was eye opening to see it from a first-person perspective.