COURSE: NURS 411
GLOBAL HEALTH CARE: FRANCE
MAGDALENA PACANSKA
06/16/2013

Abstract
The French health care system combines universal coverage with a public-private mix of hospital and ambulatory care and a higher volume of service provision than in the United States. Although the system is far from perfect, its indicators of health status and consumer satisfaction are high; its expenditures, as a share of gross domestic product, are far lower than in the United States; and patients have an extraordinary degree of choice among providers. The lessons for the United States include the importance of government’s role in providing a statutory framework for universal health insurance; recognition that piecemeal reform can broaden a partial program like Medicare to cover, eventually, the entire population; and understanding that universal coverage can be achieved without excluding private insurers from the supplementary insurance market.

France has the largest land area in Western Europe, housing 65.8 million people as of January 2011. This ranked France as the 21rd most populous country in the world; with 85 % of white people, 10 % of North African and 3.5 % of black people. The estimated birth rate as of 2000 was 12.27 births for every 1,000of the population and infant mortality is 4.51 deaths per 1,000, which is relatively lower than other developed countries. Life expectancy is one of the highest among developed countries, estimated at 74.85 years for males and 82.89 years for females. In addition to the natural population growth, there are a number of migrants who come to France on an annual basis. In 2004, there were more than 140,000 migrants, the majority of which came from Africa 65% and Europe 10%. In 2005, France spent 3,926 US dollars per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the US.