Even France doesn't provide free health care to illegals, but what do I know?
The Health Care Problem
In June 2002, the World Health Organization placed France's health care system number one among the 191 member countries, calling it "the best overall." The French system, though certainly quite expensive, has resulted in high life-expectancy and universal health insurance to all legal residents and even foreigners waiting for residency papers. In fact, a poll taken in 2002 by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Economics showed that 66 percent of the French were satisfied with their country's health care.
However, France's social welfare system continues to be undeniably bloated, and its health care spending, by percent of GDP, is far above the average of other comparable countries. Public hospitals have also run into trouble. Health care professionals are paid based on a fee-for-service system, and many choose to maximize volume of patients seen, causing a decline in the marginal quality of their services. In addition, state hospitals commonly perform poorly financially and do not provide adequate incentives to their staff to work at their best.
As if it were not enough, the heat wave chose to strike in the most relaxed month in France, August, the classic summer holiday season. Doctors, medical staff, and government personnel were on vacation, and this resulted in a fatal combination of hospitals flooded with victims, and a dearth of equipment with no central coordination for warnings or emergency response tactics from Paris. In addition, even though it was known among meteorologists that the heat wave would be one of the hottest in French history, "the government did not have a financial or social plan to take charge of the emergency service during or before the tragedy," according to Dr. Patrick Pelloux, president of the Association of Hospital Emergency Doctors of France. Neither President Jacques Chirac nor Raffarin was even in the country during the outbreak of the heat wave; as Pelloux remarked, "the government was on holiday."
There was also an alarming sense of miscommunication between the general practitioners and hospital doctors in France and misperceptions by the public on their roles in the system. Many of the general practitioners were of course on holiday, but oddly, those who remained in their offices did not receive substantially more phone calls than normal. For the most part, parents called them when their children were suffering from heat exhaustion. On the contrary, the elderly, who were suffering from symptoms that could otherwise have been tended to by general practitioners, flocked in large numbers (those that could) to the hospitals, thinking that any other doctor would not be able to solve the problem. This is a mystery that is still being investigated in the French government, but there is no doubt that the confining welfare-based health system was partly to blame.
Certainly the absence of an early warning system and medical staff, an effectual emergency services response, and a centralized coordinated information health system should receive the brunt of the blame placed on the French health care system in the wake of the heat wave tragedy. However, there exists another hidden problem that has been largely ignored by experts and scholars, the medical drug predicament in France.
A final problem in this general area is the shocking lack of public health education and awareness initiatives in France. Despite massive government deficit spending for health care, funds are poorly appropriated and at times even unintentionally wasted. Never mind non-existent public warning campaigns on television or radio detailing certain actions to protect one's health against the heat wave, France lacks even programs encouraging cancer screenings and frequent medical check-ups or admonishing against the hazards of cigarettes and alcohol.
http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1238/