Dear FRONTLINE,

I loved the show!! I have always believed that no one should have to pay for healthcare. My question is "Don't we already pay enough taxes to implement a universal health care system?" I think a large amount of our tax money is wasted on things that don't really matter. Shouldn't the health of our people matter most to us.

It seems insane to believe that with the government taking in billions of dollars in taxes every year we can't figure out a way to pay for a $15,000 medical bill when someone needs it. There are many ways our government could cut spending to be able to spend more on health care. One example would be the army and the wars that we fight. Of the countries that were covered in the show, how many of them spend as much as we do to fight a war that isn't even worth fighting anymore? Just some things to think about. Bottom line is that it is a basic human right to be healthy and to receive help when you are not.

Heidi Winters
Bowling Green, Kentucky

Dear FRONTLINE,

An excellent show. There are many facets of the healthcare system that a 1 hour show can not begin to cover. During the show, there was mention of a book on this subject by T.R. Reid. When is it due to be published, I am very interested in reading it.

Roger Pennington
Forest Grove, Oregon

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

T.R. Reid's book, titled We're Number 37! in reference to the United States' ranking in the World Health Organization's 2000 World Health Report, is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in early 2009. Click here to read a Q&A with T.R. Reid.

Dear FRONTLINE,

I noticed 4 of the 5 countries you reported on are islands and all have very restrtrictive immigration laws. Do you think that the U.S. illegal immigration number, estimated between 7 and 20 million, would make such a socialized system impossible in the U.S. as most illegals make their income under the table and do not pay taxes, including socialized medicine taxes? How do these other countries deal with illegal aliens needing healthcare?

Hammond, Indiana

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

T.R. Reid responds regarding whether illegal immigrants receive health care in the countries featured in this report:

Several of the countries we went to are concerned about illegal immigration and are looking for ways to control it. But that concern doesn't touch the health care system. They provide care for everybody in the country, regardless of status. The general attitude seems to be: "If you're in our country, we'll treat you if you're sick -- even though the police may be determined to deport you."

Dear FRONTLINE,

The one line of questioning that Mr. Reid did not include was how much each of the doctors in each country pay for malpractice insurance and how often the doctors are subjected to frivolous lawsuits. Certainly, the other countries likely have a more advanced state of tort reform than the United States. Limiting lawsuits would likely reduce the costs incurred in the US healthcare system. Please consider all of the factors that influence the costs of healthcare in the United States.

Thomas Graham
Princeton, NJ

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

Click here to read more about how medicine is practiced in these other countries -- including how malpractice is handled.

Dear FRONTLINE,

I found this program to be very informative. However, I noticed that mental health care was mentioned only in passing one or two times. How do these five countries compare to the U.S. for mental health care coverage and treatment? Here in the U.S., there is no federal guarantee that mental health care be treated the same as physical health care (parity).

So, while I happen to have an excellent health care plan by physical health standards, I find myself facing the likely possibility that I will run out of benefits for mental health treatment half-way through this calendar year. If that comes to pass, my mental health care costs will exceed $13,000 for 2008. Would this situation occur in any of the five countries you examined? How does the stigma of mental illness affect how it is treated in those countries?

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Dear FRONTLINE,

I would have like to hear from some capitalist economists with real solutions. I always like to hear both sides and feel I am probably watching a propaganda piece if I don't hear both sides.

A simple capitalist approach would be to require everyone to buy insurance with a minimum deductible of $2,000 to $5,000. Then, require all health care providers to post their prices for all services outside of their office and on a centralized web site. Next, expand the health savings account and give companies tax incentive to pay into those accounts. Finally, get rid of some of the doctor liability and encourage some caveat emptor. These small changes would encourage a true capitalist system, where people are actually shopping around. That doesn't happen now.

Arvada, Co

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a college student in Taiwan and I am applying for the medical school in Taiwan. I think I can offer some viewpoints of the national health insurance (NHI) system in Taiwan .

As a Citizen of Taiwan, I am satisfied with our NHI program. We can go to a family doctor anytime when we are sick, without a reservation. And if we think we should direct go to a specialist, we can do it as well; we just have to pay the extra co-pay, about 10 USD. The NHI also covers the dentist and Chinese medicine, without any waiting time.

The government run insurance covers everyone and it is free for the poor. (The government pays the insurance fee.) And in this March, because we have a presidential election, the ruling party (DPP) pays for the insurance bill to relieve the near poor those who owe the government. But actually, there is huge deficit in the NIH program.

On the other aspect, the medical staff is not well paid in Taiwan . The salary of a doctor is OK, but the nurses and the pharmacists get a pretty low pay. A nurse is only paid about 1,200 USD and a pharmacist is paid 1,900USD every month. They should be paid more when concerning about their heavy loading of work. Some of my friends are preparing the test for RN or USMLE. They want to work in the states in the future.

Jason Hsu
Taipei, Taiwan

Dear FRONTLINE,

Please tell T.R. Reid that the level of his objectivity, competence and overall professional journalistic skills makes Michael Moore's "Sicko" seem sooo sophomoric and inept.

Michael Moore FAILED his audience. T.R. Reid did the leg work, dragged his knuckles throught the details as best he could for the duration of a show he had and did an workman like job.

THANK YOU Frontline for putting out quality content. I don't feel like I'm being talked to like I'm some kind of ignorant simpleton as did Michael Moore.

John Favre
Denver, CO

Dear FRONTLINE,

Affordable and available health care and insurance is the most important issue for me, but I feel it is far down the list of priorities in the political campaigns. Hopefully a program like this will get more people thinking about the alternatives. The idea that change can occur - and must occur - needs to be embraced.

Two of my children were born in Japan in 1977 and 1981. My former-husband and I were on visitor visas - not even Japanese citizens - and we were given the same benefits and care that our Japanese friends received. Medical care was perhaps more basic and less consumer-informed than in the US, but it was thorough and comprehensive. Certainly there was no paperwork nightmare as can happen with insurance companies in the US.

Polly Whiteside
Lakewood, CO

Dear FRONTLINE,

Do police departments make a profit? Do fire departments make a profit? Why are there for-profit hospitals? Insurance companies are responsible to their shareholders, not to their customers (patients). This should be the first area addressed in changing our health care system. Uninsured and under insured people are awaiting to seek care far too long because they do not have or cannot pay. By the time these people come to the hospital they are in dire straights and it will cost much more to treat them now. The hospitals have to make up the cost somehow, so they raise their prices, which get passed on to the insurance companies. The insurance companies are not going to take the loss, so they are going to raise their premiums. So in the end people with health insurance in this country are paying for the people without it and industry is making a profit. It is appalling that the US has the highest % of GDP spent on health care but the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality than the other five countries. Why are we spending so much but getting so little in return? The focus should also be on prevention and education. But there is no money in prevention and education. Money is to be made in medicine, medication and treatment, and diagnostics. As one of prior comments strongly suggested, why is there no mention of nurses? There are about 500,000 physicians and over 2 million nurses in the US and not one mention of nurses in the program. Sad really. As a Professional Registered Nurse I see potential nurses could have to help this problem, but no one is asking and unfortunately, nurses are not talking. Does anyone outside of health care even know what nurses really do? More importantly, what nurses could really do if we were given more autonomy as health care providers. I am not trying to take away from physicians, but nurses could be agents for change in our health care system. I suggest our national nursing leadership step up to the plate and be the voice for nursing that you should be. I also suggest the national, state and local politicians find out what a huge untapped resource nurses are. Everyone deserves quality health care. I believe that the `free market' system we have now is socially unjust and the focus needs to change from profit for a few to access for all.

R N
Seattle, WA

Dear FRONTLINE,

The first question that Americans must ask themselves when discussing this issue is whether we want to live in a civilized society or a barbarous one. If we choose to live in a civilized society, we must begin the discussion with the premise that all Americans must have full coverage. I have been in medical clinic administration for 15 years. I could write a long book about the scores of patients (read: fellow Americans) that have been nickled & dimed and abandoned by what passes for the provision of healthcare in our country. Answer the first question and the answers to the other questions will become more apparent.

Diego Taylor
Del Rio, Texas

Dear FRONTLINE,

I enjoyed the show and think that there were some valid arguments but like Mr. Reid, I have lived in some of the same countries he has and my experience is somewhat less glowing.

I am currently in Japan and although the cost is very cheap, the options are limited. More troublesome, and something which has received a great deal of reports in the last couple of years is the number of hospitals which can refuse treatment. There have been highly publicized cases of pregnant women, in an ambulance, being refused by upwards of 30 hospitals resulting in the death of the woman and/or the baby. I also was involved in a life threatening medical emergency and was denied admittance to upwards of 10 hospitals. You are supposed to call an emergency room before you show up to see if they can accommodate you and if you just show up (which we did after being turned down by 6 hospitals over the phone) they will still turn you away. My own story was documented and published and I am not alone.

I have a friend who is Japanese, married to a physician in Japan and she flew to the United States and had her baby there. Her child had some complications and had to stay in a hospital in America for a week after birth. Even though she had to pay it all out of pocket she still preferred the care over what was available to her in Japan and she also knew that if she was unable to pay, and despite what the media would have you believe, she would not have to pay. Right or wrong you cannot be denied medical care in America for lack of funds.

As I tell my friends and family in America, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. And having experienced medical care in other countries I still think that America has the best coverage.

Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Dear FRONTLINE,

As many of the other respondents aptly noted, Mr. Reid ignored many other areas of relative inefficiency in our system. I wonder how much money is spent on advertising not by pharmaceutical companies, but by hospitals and other providers, and how much more care for the poor could be provided, or providers/nurses better paid, if these funds were put to better use. The media, of course, ignores this because they are the beneficiaries of all the advertising dollars. I wonder what the advertising/PR budgets are like in these other countries?

I would also be skeptical about our government's ability to get the results it desires with legislation. The HIPPA bill (Kennedy/Kassebaum) was supposed to allow one to transfer insurance coverage from one job to another, and maintain it during times of unemployment. It seems to have done none of and this while imposing unfunded mandates upon healthcare providers at all levels, and in my view as a physcian, severe inefficiencies. Obviously, the approach in Taiwan goes in exactly the opposite direction. Besides learning from other countries, we must also realize that our own legislation often does not produce the expected results.

Manalapan, New Jersey

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you for a much-needed survey of how other countries make health care available to all.

But you do a disservice when several times during the show you wondered whether "Americans" would accept such a large government role in the health business, repeating the commonly-held view that Americans are suspicious of government. I think this supposed aversion to government involvement is a myth spread in large part by the private health industry. And unfortunately, you repeat it.

I think if we could scrap our system and adopt any one of the health systems the show describes, Americans would be elated...unless the media keeps harping on the supposed perils of government involvement.

Avi Bortnick
New York, NY

Dear FRONTLINE,

Finally someone looked at what other coutnries are doing to see what we can learn from them. Very good coverage from all sides: government, patient, insurance company, physician, etc. I hope that our three political candidates have seen this. If not, you should send them a copy. Or run for office so you can help them fix our US Healthcare issues. No one should go without care, especially the elderly and our children.

DeAnna Coleman
Nashua, NH

Dear FRONTLINE,

Another excellent Frontline. One statistic that struck me was that 30% of Swiss pharmaceutical profits are from American consumers. My guess is that this statistic is similar around the world. Why don't Americans realize that by avoiding negotiations with drug companies, we are effectively paying for other countries pharmaceuticals?

After some digging around, I found that this is exactly the point made in the Uwe Reinhardt interview, which apparently didn't make it in the show. In a global marketplace where other countries are imposing price ceilings, it makes no sense for America to unilaterally "leave it to the market." We should instead be using market principles to implement policies which benefit Americans - namely, to stop paying for Switzerland's drugs.

Palo Alto, CA