Dutch Health Care System Leads Poll

The Netherlands has the most popular health care system among 10 countries surveyed, while Americans believe their system—which is built around employer-sponsored health care—is the one in most need of a complete overhaul, recent research reveals.

Results from several recent surveys were compiled by Harris Interactive, a Rochester, New York-based polling company, to reveal that only 9 percent of the adults surveyed in the Netherlands said their health care system needs to be rebuilt, while 33 percent of Americans said the system in the U.S. should be scrapped and completely changed.

Among the respondents in the Netherlands, 42 percent said the system works well and only minor changes were needed, while just 12 percent voiced that opinion in the United States. Italy’s system, though, was deemed even more unpopular than America’s in that regard, with just 11 percent saying health care in that country works well. Twenty percent of Italians surveyed said their system needs to be completely rebuilt.

Researchers polled adults in the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Italy and the United States. The results are at www.harrisinteractive.com.

Filed by Michael Bradford of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.