A French Doctor claims he found a cheap, readily available cure for Alcoholism. He may be full of crap, but the French reaction tells us a lot about their health system.
Those things are mostly good, not that you'll hear about them in media.
Dr.Olivier Ameisen was a sucesful heart surgeon in Manhattan, making loads of money. But he had a major alcohol problem. Alcoholic heart surgeons are dangerous, so he did the honorable thing, quit his Manhattan practice, and went back to France.
He read an interesting article. A patient using Baclofen injections as a muscle relaxer reported a major drop in his cravings for cocaine. Baclofen has been around since the 20s, and is widely used, which means the side-effects are very well-known. Dr. Ameisen decided to try the injections. The risks are low and the potential reward (no more alcohol addiction) was huge. He says they worked.
So he wrote a book about it.
French patients started asking for it, and some of their Doctors provided the treatment. It seems to be working. That would not happen in the US -- Baclofen isn't approved for alcohol addiction, so penny-pinching insurers would be loathe to pay for it. It's "experimental." They'd prefer hoping current (expensive) treatments for alcoholism work than risk making a cheap, almost certainly safe, one a shot.
Notice that the Socialist French system is actually providing cheap, effective treatment than our supposedly superior free market system. And the free market will continue failure until somebody convinces insurers to pay for a promising treatment. In theory free market systems respond to demand. That's the point. Back in reality it just ain't working.
The French are probably going to prevent lots of auto accidents, expensive liver transplants, etc. We're not. We'll pay for all that stuff. Some insurers will benefit because they saved a penny on Baclofen. Others won't. Auto insurers are particularly screwed. Drunk drivers cost them many times what Baclofen would. But they all want to be the former, so none of them will bother paying for it.
No wonder the US government spends more on it's "free market" than anybody else in the world.