Carrying On: The healthy Danish?

As is typical of the fall semester, last week I found myself facing a daunting pile of homework, impending deadlines, and to top it off, a poorly-timed bout of influenza. While that’s usually the final nail in the coffin for whatever paper I’m writing or test I’m studying for, this time I was not terribly upset about my illness, because I’m in Denmark, a country with free healthcare.
While easy and affordable access to healthcare may be a huge issue in America, in the Kingdom of Denmark, all 5.5 million Danes have free, easy access to universal healthcare. My personal experience with their socialized medicine system was a breeze. I verified my residency in Denmark with a local health authority, a relatively quick and painless step for foreigners, and then called a phone number on the back of the tourist health insurance card that he gave me. I was able to schedule an appointment the same day—not days down the line, as I had expected. I set one for the next day.
I worried about getting to the office while sick, but I didn’t have to sweat that, either. My doctor’s office was literally right down the street from where I live, which is fairly typical under the Danish system.  I only had to ride my bike for a minute in order to reach the office, where I swiped my Danish ID card at the front desk—no nasty paperwork to fill out—and waited just a few minutes before seeing my doctor.
The doctor gave me a typical examination and asked me a few questions about how I was feeling. I had a viral infection, so there wasn’t anything she could prescribe, but she gave me good advice for fighting the cold and asked me to come back in a few days if my condition did not improve.
Denmark’s system is based on the principle that everyone in the country should have access to free health services—and from the looks of it, it’s cost effective. Based on rough numbers, in 2007, public and private Danish healthcare expenditures constituted 9.7 percent of Denmark’s GDP, or about $2,785 per person. On the other hand, the United States spent roughly $7,439 per person on public and private healthcare in the same year, or 15.7 percent of GDP.
Danes who can afford it are able to also enroll in private insurance plans. And if I’d had something seriously wrong with me, the general practitioner I saw would have recommended me to a specialist. In order to see a specialist one must first be seen by a general practitioner, which keeps people who don’t really need expensive treatments from adding unnecessary costs. In general, specialists are more expensive than general practitioners, so when they’re unnecessary, it is best to leave them out of the cost equation.
But the biggest difference is that while Americans primarily handle their care through private health insurers, Danes do not have a huge healthcare infrastructure to muddle through. Because the government is paying for the costs of healthcare, they have an incentive to keep their citizens healthy and keep costs down, while private insurance companies obviously have a direct incentive not to—every dollar they don’t shell out for treatment is a dollar that goes towards the bottom line.
Public health expenditures are also larger in the United States because there are so many people who do not have insurance. Because Americans will often wait until their illnesses are severe before seeking treatment, they often wind up in emergency rooms, where local governments usually pick up the tab for the uninsured. And medical malpractice lawyers drive up the costs of insurance for everyone.
In spite of the fact that most students are still covered under their parents’ health insurance plans, this issue is relevant for us because we are the ones who will pay for today’s healthcare policy mistakes. Rising costs of healthcare in America will mean higher taxes and higher insurance premiums in the future. We need to continue to take steps forward to avoid future budget catastrophe, and looking at successful models abroad can help.
Even though my experiences with Danish healthcare are limited, a cheaper system with a higher life expectancy should be a model for the broken American system. The Danes have found a way to make high quality, socialized healthcare work in a non-authoritarian way and at a price that is way below that of our system. Even if universal healthcare seems like a far-off dream, we can make significant progress by studying the proven Danish model.