SouthFranceAmerican 3 - CANCER CARE IN FRANCE
A couple of years ago, Cathey was diagnosed with breast cancer. Here's the story of her treatment. In a word...Excellent!
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SPRINGTIME DURING COVID MEANS PICNICS
Perhaps the one thing that bothers us the most about the COVID pandemic is the closing of our favorite restaurants. If I had to name one thing that makes our move to France worth the effort, it would be the incredibly fresh and tasty food and wine. Of course, Cathey is still a truly amazing cook. But she does enjoy going to one of our favorite restaurants and sampling the work of our local chefs.
Maybe we can't go out to eat at a restaurant these days, but with the weather warming up as spring approaches, we can still go out to eat. We picnic. Here are some pics from our recent forays around the region.
GRUISSAN
Our first picnic, on a breakwater by the Med.
BOUZIGUES
ROQUEBRON
SouthFranceAmerican 1 - Election 2020
In this first in a series of short videos, I discuss the 2020 Presidential election in the USofA as seen by an American living in France.
HEALTHCARE FOR PROFIT MAKES ME SICK
Let me clear from the outset. The people who are championing a single-payer healthcare system in the United States are lying to you. At the very least, they are misrepresenting - one assumes intentionally - what the savings would be should the US institute a system like Medicare For All. Such a system will not mimic the healthcare offered in such places as France or the Scandinavian countries for one important reason. In those countries, costs are strictly regulated. Doctors can only charge so much per visit. The rates are set by regulation for all sorts of specialties and services. And those rates are substantially lower than what is normally charged in the US. So if there is to be money saved by switching to a single-payer, Medicare For All system, that money will almost certainly have to come from price controls. That's NOT the way that Americans do things.
In the US, healthcare is considered a business like any other. And that means that providers are, by and large, in it for profit. Please don't take that to mean that doctors in the US are, as a class, profiteers. But they are complicit in a system that generates enormous profits, profits that double the per capita cost of healthcare in the US as compared to that of Western Europe. Yes, I understand that one of the built-in costs to the system is the cost of insurance and the litigious nature of Americans. But that's another profit point for the American professional class, protected by a Congress full of lawyers who protect the interests of their fellow trial lawyers.
No. If healthcare is to be universal in the USofA at a cost comparable to that of Western Europe, Americans will just have to get over their notion of the evils of socialism. We fund Social Security, Medicare, libraries, first responders, and the like communally. The leap to funding universal healthcare, communally through fair taxation, is not all that great a stretch.
LE LEZARD BLEU (THE BLUE LIZARD): RESTAURANT REVIEW
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