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Comment by Kankuro | Hacker News Reader

Regarding healthcare, the successive governments have tried to limit the healthcare expenses by limiting the numerus clausus of trained medicine students (with the support of the doctor unions). Now there is more demand than offer (which goes to the most attractive areas), the scarcity is really high in the countryside, you can wait for months for an appointment and it will take years before new doctors are trained. There are several worrying structural problems, but compared to some other countries healthcare is quite affordable and high quality.

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> Regarding healthcare, the successive governments have tried to limit the healthcare expenses

But, France has Free Healthcare… ?

If they socialized healthcare then why are they dealing with such a scarcity issue? All citizens are paying for it out of their taxes. Why isn’t it working?

The funding of the healthcare (and pensions also) has to come from somewhere. Here, it is a mandatory percentage on top of the salary (so a part of the population don't contribute, some contribute more, and everybody can get the basic healthcare). And the higher the contributions, the higher the cost of the labour. The right-wing says that it is a big problem for the competitiveness of the French economy. It can be regulated in several ways: changing the amount of the contributions, changing the level of healthcare by several means (scarcity, lower reimbursements, fewer resources for hospitals…), controlling the doctors' fees and the price of the medications, trying to make the hospitals more efficient, avoiding unnecessary acts… In the last decades, governments have done a bit of all of that. People are unhappy, caregivers are exhausted and feel underpaid, the system is in debt and there is no consensus for the solutions.

I know the same thing happens with state bar associations in various states. They lobby to limit the number of law students to restrict competition and keep legal services outrageously expensive. NIMBY capitalism at work.

Why does everyone always give governments absurd credit when they do stuff like this? One of the ministers explicitly said the numerus clausus stays implemented because it limits both health care itself and the cost of medicine that's prescribed.

Given how hard doctors are expected to work in hospitals I'm pretty damn sure that a vote in "the order" (yeah it's called the order) for increasing the number of doctors, the numerus clausus even 50% or even 100% would pass with overwhelming support by everyone except the minister.

> limiting the numerus clausus of trained medicine students (with the support of the doctor unions)

Same in usa. You get attacked and namecalled if you bring it up .

How dare you suggest we reduce the quality of doctors to the top 1% rather than top 0.2% of academic performers! Quality will fall through the floor if they aren't in such high demand!

comparing to which countries ? Like Sudan or Chad ?

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