Reid points out that each of these models is in place in the United States at present. The Beveridge Model (as seen in systems in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Cuba), the Bismark Model (with examples from Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan), National Health Insurance Model (as present in Canada and Taiwan), and Out-of-pocket Model (US and Cambodia). Reid describes the 4 basic models of health care delivery and insurance. Reid notes that over 20,000 American die yearly because they cannot afford to see a doctor, and quotes that 700,000 individuals must declare bankruptcy due to mounting bills arising from a lack of health insurance coverage. Other democracies that have embraced universal health coverage for their citizens have outperformed the US health care system on indices of cost, quality, and choice – 3 key focal points for discussion in the book. Reid couches the issue of the fundamental moral decision to provide health care coverage to all citizens or not. His conclusion that all of these other plans spend less on health care administration than the United States, achieve better outputs than the US system, and cover all citizens within their countries is irrefutable. Reid describes his purpose in writing this book to “search the developed world for effective health care systems and take lessons from the ones that work best.” Not surprisingly, Reid finds positives and negatives in many of the systems he evaluates in an unbiased fashion. These countries, in doing so for less money, provide universal coverage for all their citizens. Reid describes the methods that other industrialized democracies have used to provide health care for citizens for far less than what is spent for health care in the United States.
In The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, author T.R.
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