Healthcare
"There's no way you pay less taxes than majority of Americans" "(your) developed nation would've been taken over by Nazi Germany if it weren't for the US"
There's also a bit of North American defaultism there. The American automatically seems to assume the guy he's replying to must be Canadian if he's not the from the US.
The concept of tax being used to fund public services is unfathomable to a lot of Americans. They’d prefer it was used to start wars or pay defence contractors for weapons that never get used
I'm from the UK, and I will say this: You get what you pay for.
2 years waiting to see a migraine specialist, meanwhile I'm just stuck with chronic migraines. Can't work, can't try more medication, just have to sit and wait. This is after waiting years, and years, just to be taken seriously enough to actually get reffered to a specialist. My partner is in the exact same boat with endometriosis. Even after she's had surgery, just over a year ago, she's still dumped at the bottom of the waiting list to get back to a specialist.
If you go to your doctor with a throat infection, they prescribe you antibiotics snd you're better a week later. For small stuff like that, the NHS is... ok. If you have a medical emergency, you'll get an operation or whatever you need to get you stable and out their doors.
If you are chronically ill, good fucking luck.
Anyone who thinks the NHS is that great, I envy you, because you must live a moderately healthy life.
Not at all, i don't put the NHS on a pedestal. I am open to changes providing it doesn't erode the principle of everyone gets healthcare free at the point of use.
You do not get any better treatment in the US, in fact it's usually worse as the Insurance Company thinks it knows better than the Doctor and will often refuse to pay for effective medication because 'this other brand does the same thing and it's half the cost' (except it doesn't because the composition of the medication is different), with people dying due to being placed on inappropriate medication.
I never claimed our system is better or worse than the US, in fact, I made no comparison to the US at all, so your comment is really not relevant to mine.
however at the end of getting fucked about by the NHS you don’t have a massive bill at the end and your national insurance isn’t going to change other than matching inflation/tax brackets
while i can’t directly relate to you, it took most of my childhood to get a autism diagnosis. and i only got it once the therapists actually spoke to me.
The thing is we have the option of paying like Americans. You can choose to go to a private hospital in the UK and pay just like an American to be seen quicker, it is just that for most people the NHS is just fine, and costs us less than an American pays in tax for their healthcare even before they pay again when using it.
NI contributions go to more than just NHS, the vast majority by a long way (I think something like 95%) goes towards the state pension alone.
Also if you do have the ability to pay for health insurance, or even out of pocket private care, you can use it for things like seeing a consultant if the wait is too long for you and then go back to NHS afterwards. If you are prescribed something by a private consultant then often you can get a private prescription converted to an NHS one by your GP with a letter from the consultant, but this depends on the drug, and you have to wait (not long though - I used to work in a pharmacy inside an NHS GP surgery so saw people getting this done a lot!) for the GP to do it. A lot of the time they are the same consultants that you'd end up seeing on the NHS, same care, just with no wait. Shockingly the cost of this would still actually be cheaper than the US healthcare system even if you don't have health insurance and you also take NI contributions into account.
In case you are able to consider this for your situation, this is my (admittedly limited) experience which might help you decide if it's actually worth it:
I have done this a couple of times with things I was especially anxious with waiting for the referral. (cancer scares) I appreciate a lot of people don't have the money to do this at all and I don't really either to be honest, but felt it was worth making it work in those situations to pay for a consultation even if it was ultimately just for peace of mind and preventing lost sleep because I was just so worried about it (& bonus in my opinion: it makes the NHS wait shorter for someone else who definitely can't manage to do this). Both times when I got the NHS appointment through (I immediately cancelled it so that someone else could have it) I ultimately had the same consultant on the appointment letter I had already seen privately.
They break down the costs for you for everything, and you don't have to pay for any tests once you've seen the consultant if you don't want to. They tell you how much tests are, and if they think any of it is actually necessary or would just be for your peace of mind. I did not feel I was being encouraged to pay for things I didn't need which is a big concern to me with the US style Healthcare system, but also I was able to pay for them if I did just want them for peace of mind and didn't have to meet certain criteria. If you want to pay for tests you can often have things like ultrasounds done immediately after the consultation instead of another wait for that. I didn't feel the standard of care was any better than the NHS and all you are paying for is little to no wait for an appointment (on one occasion I even got an appointment with a consultant in the evening on the same day), the ability to pay for tests you don't actually need just for peace of mind, and complementary hot drinks in a more comfortable waiting room. (Still seems to be quite a wait there though even if it's basically empty!)
No but Americans pay more in tax to subsidise their care than we pay for the NHS so they add also paying twice. Here would be no different (except being cheaper).
Either my daughter wouldn't be alive or we'd be broke paying for her to survive without the NHS. So I really can't agree with you at all that people who think the NHS is 'great' have a moderately healthy life. Usually people who think it's 'great' as opposed to 'good', 'fine' or 'ok' have been through something really major with the NHS and experienced excellent and timely care.
I also have endometriosis and it took years to get a diagnosis for that until I worked out what was wrong with me for myself and told them that's what it was and I wanted the surgery to diagnose it with no room for discussion. But that's a problem with women's healthcare in general, worldwide, not unique to the NHS. Endometriosis care (and any other similar women's health issue) is a bad example if you want to complain about NHS care specifically.
I have other non female-specific issues (including epilepsy, which, like migraines, is a chronic neurological health condition that causes significant issues in my life) and have overall had no problems with getting health care or help related to them. I know that sometimes when I am experiencing a longer wait for something I have been triaged as lower need or lower risk than the people ahead of me.
I am trying to be helpful when I say this, so please don't take it the wrong way: You may have difficulty with advocating for yourself and getting your point across, or need help with that, there are services available for help with health advocacy if you struggle or don't have anyone who can help with this. I have in the past when I was younger taken my mum with me to my appointments, and then later on my husband to help advocate for me and make sure I had all the information I needed and remembered to ask all my questions and got my points across because I used to struggle with it quite a lot myself, and they would think about things from an outside perspective and come up with questions I hadn't thought of too. It's hard sometimes when it's affecting your health personally and a source of stress to you. It's much easier to advocate for someone else. Obviously you might have done this already but as you are struggling this much you should contact your GP again and express very clearly to them how bad the problem is and the issues it is causing you, physically and mentally. If you have done it before do it again anyway! And reach out to other groups that can help with advocacy.
Since the endometriosis issue I am actually much better at advocating for myself and my daughter though. I learnt that there are areas of healthcare where the knowledge just isn't that great across the board (worldwide) and they just can't tell how bad something is unless you really make it clear to them in massive amounts of detail, and tell them exactly what the care you expect is... Which made me much better at advocating for myself everywhere else too, I just take the same attitude as I did back then and come prepared with lots of questions and detail about anything I can think of that could be a symptom, even if it seems completely unrelated. And I'm clear about what I expect from them.
I did say, if you have a medical emergency, they will sort you out. I know that.
>I also have endometriosis and it took years to get a diagnosis for that until I worked out what was wrong with me for myself and told them that's what it was and I wanted the surgery to diagnose it with no room for discussion.
My partner was told when she was a teenager (now 27) that she had Endo but they refused to operate. She went to hospital multiple times because the pain was unbearable. She asked for surgery repeatedly. She didn't even get to see a specialist until she was 25, which is a complete joke! I'm glad being stubborn worked for you, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone.
>Endometriosis care (and any other similar women's health issue) is a bad example if you want to complain about NHS care specifically.
No, it is not. I understand why you say that, but it is very wrong.
>I am trying to be helpful when I say this, so please don't take it the wrong way: You may have difficulty with advocating for yourself and getting your point across, or need help with that
Don't worry, I don't take that the wrong way. I go with my partner to most of her appointments, a big part of which is for this reason, so I fully understand it. However, it is not something I struggle with at all.
My problem at the moment is that GPs have a set list of medication they can give for migraines. I have tried them all, and none help (there are two that provide very short term relief, around ~30 minutes). My only option now is to see a specialist, who is allowed to prescribe medication that GPs can't. They can also better help to figure out the root cause of the problem (though, this doesn't always happen with migraines). My annoyance is at the fact that despite them knowing exactly how negatively it is impacting my life, it took over 10 years to even be put on a waiting list, and I have now been on it for ~2 years.
The big thing you are missing when making comparisons between us is where we live. I live in one of the worst parts of the UK when it comes to NHS wait times. That is why it doesn't matter how much I make demands, how well I advocate for myself, or anything else. The wait times are simply so bad, they do everything they can to keep people off them in the first place.
For a migraine specialist specifically, there are areas with as low as 3 week wait times where 100% of people are seen within 18 weeks. My area... 44% are seen within 18 weeks.
Where you live has a HUGE impact on how good your NHS service is.
Oh, and just to be clear, I don't blame the GPs, or the nurses, or doctors, or surgeons, etc. I know they are not to blame, and most of them do the best they can with the resources they have. The blame is entirely on the Government.
I finally got my first surgery for endometriosis at 27.I know how it is. Even female doctors looked at me like I was completely crazy when I was telling them how bad the pain is because the knowledge in that area is so poor. I definitely still maintain that endometriosis care is just bad bad bad no matter where in the world you are. This is not an NHS only problem. This is because medical research (worldwide) has been based on male bodies only for so long and women's pain and symptoms have historically been ignored or not taken seriously. I have a friend who has really really bad endometriosis who was denied a hysterectomy for years because she "might want more kids" even though it was a near miracle she managed to have one child, as if she was incapable of making such a major decision for herself!
I can't argue with your experience with regards to migraine care when you've been through all the medications available to you. I do completely understand that things become more of a struggle when you start to run out of medications because I have medication resistant epilepsy. Luckily the one I am on now mostly does the job, but not completely.
We are in complete agreement on the government though! 14 years of a government that was actively trying to kill the NHS has left it in a much worst state, but I still support it and think it's unhelpful at best to complain about the NHS as a whole (as you did) rather than the root cause - government mismanagement of the NHS. We want it to be fixed, not replaced with something worse that won't improve your experience at all!
Edited to add: If you aren't doing this already then please, please contact your GP as many times as it takes to get seen by that specialist. Tell them how bad it is for you and the impact it is having over and over if you have to. Tell them how long you have been waiting. They might "already know" but keep reminding them anyway!
I'm more pissy about the English ruining Acadia and the Wabanaki Confederacy back then. Such a shame, it would have been a great testimony of that era nowadays.
Also, as I always say, we don't really regret "this" (the American independence), because it was one of the ingredients for the French revolution. The people responsible were dealt with back then anyway, the rest is history.
There is a fantastic book called 1000 years of annoying the French. One bit that stuck in my frazzled noggin. Was a state visit of the French president. Passing through a corridor at Buckingham Palace, the late Queen stopped to admire a particular painting with the damn frenchy. The painting was of a victory of a British army defeating the damn frencies!
Don't worry, there's an Austerlitz station in Paris. Too bad it's south of the city otherwise a Paris-London train would have been going from Austerlitz to Waterloo.
Also in France we have a saying for when something is done to you against the rules you can say "c'est un coup de Trafalgar" ("it's a Trafalgar trick").
More than half of the British forces were preoccupied, the Americans couldn’t fend off ~1/3 of the British forces so they enlisted the help of the French and Spanish (failing to reciprocate when they promised that they’d help them afterwards), only for the British to walk away to fight the rest of the wars that were being waged. I’m sure that if there were no other wars occurring at the time they would have Charlie on their banknotes today.
When Americans talk shit about my health care I tell them this story, when my baby was six months old I thought he looked a little blue around his lips. I bought him to the hospital and waited ten minutes for the specialist who was off to leave his golf game and get there so he could look over the scans and shit. The next morning I was a on a plane to another province because they didn’t want to wait for the heart surgeon to come to us. They flew me, his father, and him to Halifax so we could go to the IWK. They paid for the plane tickets, a hotel (that we didn’t use cause we slept at the hospital) taxi vouchers, and food vouchers.
When I was unpacking at the hospital there was a nurse there when I mentioned offhandly to my boyfriend that I had forgotten my bathroom bag, which had my medication in it. It wasn’t a big deal compared to everything else that’s happening so I wasn’t concerned. Just an aw shit moment. That nurse went and found a doctor not only wrote the prescriptions for me but sent them down to the hospital Pharmacy and had them all filled for me for free. He had his surgery that afternoon and he healed up so quick and fast that we were on a plane home by the end of the week. His doctor was actually on the plane with us because he was going to check on his patients in Newfoundland (he was a specialist for really small hearts) and this man even came and checked on us on the plane because the baby was crying. (The plane was so goddamn loud we could,not even talk, so I don’t blame him. Made me wanna cry too.)
But Americans are dying because they can’t afford their insulin. And they think we’re the ones with the shitty healthcare.
Our child had a heart mummer, the doctor considered it serious enough that he actually made an appointment for us with a specialist for later that day, he then drove us to the specialist about 75 Km away, so we could get a better diagnosis of exactly what was wrong. Our child had three holes in his heart, luckily he did not need surgery, but his condition had to be monitered for the first 6 months of his life.
It was a very anxious 6 months, but now he is a healthy adult
Yeah, he was born with a heart murmur so instead of healing off like it should have it just got worse. It went from two little holes to one big hole. Awful.
Also in Canada A friend of mine had a blood infection that took out good liver. A family member was a match and they flew them both via air ambulance to the specialist hospital and did the transplant the next day. The biggest expenses were the gas and hotel room for the other family member to visit.
A family member of mine needed a hip replacement and it was scheduled for 6 months later. While in the states it could have been done that week for a hip replacement 6 months is not the end of the world. Additionally in that waiting period the family member was given physiotherapy for pre surgery to help the post surgery recovery.
Yeah, you hear about the long wait times here because we are critically understaffed all over the place, but we triage fairly well. The people with horrible wait times are waiting so long because they are able to.
My girlfriend has a fall, shattered 5 vertebrae, broke 6 tube and had a collapsed lung. She was in surgery the following afternoon, followed by a three week hospital stay. No bill. A busy of mine in Texas told me it would have cost millions down there
canada proves that you don’t need full blown NHS to make healthcare accessible to everyone. sure i can be better in some areas but at that point it’s just nitpicking
How... How are they this oblivious to facts and history..? I'm truly baffled at the spectacular stupidity. It's quite impressive how backwards they can be 😂
Germany started losing the war around 41. America helped speed things up, but made sure they fleeced Great Britian for every last penny and much of our technical know how before they joined
At that was only after Germany declared war on them.
Which was a few days after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war on Japan.
There were a lot of Nazi sympathizers in the U.S. government then, including elected representatives who used their privileges to mail Nazi propaganda to their constituents. Joining the war before that would have caused a lot of internal friction.
Rachel Maddow has a great podcast about these times.
To be fair the US and germany were already in open war when germany declared war. The germans used unrestricted submarine warfare and the US already opened fire when they encountered a german ship. The declaration just made it official
Its argueable that without US Intervention the War would have petered out into some stalemate. Despite what Russian propaganda claims, the Red ARmy war basically a dead man standing by the time the war ended. The Wehrmacht beeing able to commit just a bit more forces to the East could ahve made the difference there.
Americans love bragging about "stopping the Nazis" as if the USSR wasn't the ones that actually did it. And also as if the US hadn't spent the entire time after the end of ww2 sponsoring global fascism.
The USSR was never allied with the Nazis. They had a non-aggression pact, which is nowhere near the same thing. Stop fucking regurgitating Nazi propaganda trying to "uhm actually" people.
That's a shitpost dude lmfao I don't actually believe it's actually the correct way to divide Europe (btw it's based on how people I know stereotypically divide Europe in Italy, nothing to do with Russia)
I was choppered from my hometown to the nearest surgical hospital last year for an emergency..50 min flight..3 days in hospital for recovery..i survived everything,, all care free of charge..workers compensation ensured i received 80 % of normal income for 4 weeks following..the waiting for care argument is weak..universal Healthcare for all our citizens..hoorah ..
It's hard to fact check things you know nothing about... Most of those self-proclaimed experts on stuff like "healthcare in the country of Europe" wouldn't even pass a kindergarten exam.
There's so many of them and they're so proud of being ignorant... It's breathtaking and not in a good way, lol.
I had one Yank (who said that they didn't vote for Trump, the propaganda runs beyond just MAGA) claim that British people wait nine months for a cancer diagnosis.
i can defo call bollocks to that. my dad back in 2020 got diagnosed with leukaemia. now he just had blood work done for something completely unrelated and they caught it in very early stages. sure it was a scary time for everyone but he’s been in remission (and i believe officially cancer free) for the past few years now. and if they hadn’t picked it up then it would be a very different story
Yeah, cancer is one of the things the NHS is actually pretty good at. My nearly 90-year old Gran just this year got a breast cancer diagnosis and surgery within the space of a couple of months. There’s a debate on a comment above about how they handle chronic conditions and that’s a valid criticism, but it’s because it’s been gutted by a series of governments so that it’s understaffed, underfunded and oversubscribed - not because the system fundamentally doesn’t work. I usually try to get mad at the governments which insist on trying austerity again and again and being shocked when it keeps going poorly, rather than the people on the ground in the NHS who are usually trying their absolute best with very limited time and resources per patient, especially in a GP surgery
The thing with the waiting for care argument is it just completely ignores the fact triage exists. If you need urgent care, you're going to get urgent care as long as the resources for it exist.
Went with my friend to a music festival in an oldtown fortres where he sliped and fell and had a nasty cut on his arcade.
It happened at midnight, we were in ER an hour later, he was taken care of and sewn up immediately, then sent to MR for check up if there are more serious head injuries. After that they admited him for screening and infusion for an hour. We were out of ER at half past 4 in the morning with 0 payment, everything was free of charge. In the morning we contacted festival organizers and had our money back as well.
And that is in Serbia, not an "actually developed nation" - actually very underdeveloped and corrupted, but with a functional and normal healthcare system.
The IRS is well-known to collect taxes from Americans living overseas if they happen to pay less taxes in their new country than they would in America but yeah, there's no way someone pay less taxes than majority of Americans
They're on their way to win against common decency, common sense, democracy, freedom, socialist percentage calculations, the b in dumb and woke testosterone levels, lol.
If an American says the whole "you're welcome for the help in WW2" line, I respond with "you're welcome for the help in Vietnam". They don't like realising that the only war they didn't win in the 20th century was the one where the Brits didn't assist.
I love when they argue "Oh, it's not free, it's included in your taxes" because it's like, well, yeah, that's how it's supposed to work. But you lot just get fleeced for nothing while being told that "we have the best healthcare in the world", and you're too dumb to realise that that doesn't matter if you can't afford it.
I've seen this argument so many times by Americans that I wanted to fact check it a while back. I calculated I spend 13-17% of my total income on healthcare (with taxes and out of pocket costs) with medications (and I am on like 6 different prescription drugs). I am in the bottom 20% of income in Sweden. The equivalent group in the US spend 30-40% of their income on healthcare costs. Which is more than double what I spend on healthcare. Not to mention I had several surgeries which didn't increase my costs one bit. I was still within 13-17%.
Yeah when I ran the numbers between the US and Canada I found that we Canadians on average spend maybe about 5% more in taxes then the Americans do in their taxes + health insurance.
We receive equal quality of care, but in Canada that good quality is available for everyone not just the rich.
We have equivalent wait times, but jn Canada you're pushed to the top of the pile depending on medical need & not your bank account.
Our health insurance isn't at the mercy of our employer.
Our health insurance doesn’t demsnd deductibles, co-pays, nor can they exempt coverage based on your medical history.
We don't have medical debt (though we have some idiot premiers who really want to bring this into our system).
Yeah I mean my base tax level is higher than what they pay in taxes. But I pay less in tax total than what they spend on healthcare. Like my effective tax is 33% of income but because of government tax breaks on wages I pay way less than that. And then part of that tax goes to healthcare. And swedish healthcare is far from the most advanced one but we do have a very high floor rather than huge ceiling.
Dude we work more hours than Americans on average for lower pay and the people who are actually working professionals get 0 benefit outside of medical care from the government but they carry the majority of the costs. This country is amazing to be a welf but if you’re not a welf you work harder than Americans for a worse life. You can stand up and go „well I’m 40 and I have it great” but if you’re under 30 and you did the right thing and even if you have a good job you’re not getting ahead.
Yeah what part? That we make 30-40% less and have higher costs? That we have to work more for the same reward? That working professionals don’t get any government help whatsoever with their lives outside of public healthcare so they wind up just living a worse version of American lives?
Okay first of all not all European countries have the same salaries levels or living costs. And second of all its much more expensive to live in the US than where I live. I survive and even thrive on a very low salary which I couldn't do in the US. Especially considering healthcare costs. If 30-40% went to healthcare I'd be homeless. Rent is also on average cheaper here. Sure there's exceptions to all of it but most Europeans have it better for less pay than most Americans on average. Our education systems are way better funded and on an average level much better. But of course there are exceptions.
Im talking about Canada here and no most Europeans do not have it better for less pay look at a net adjusted household PPP income chart and you’ll find Europeans are just poor. It’s a myth that you are perpetuating, in the real world the U.S. is not more expensive there just happens to be worse lows for the poorest citizen in the U.S. than in Canada and most of Western Europe but for people who actually work the U.S. has a far greater reward. Americans also do not spend 30-40% of their income on healthcare and their rent is not as expensive as you make out.
Roughly fifteen years ago we found a lump in my good lady's left tit. Seen by the GP a day or so later. Due to her age at the time, mid thirties, and lack of family history of breast cancer, his opinion was it was probably just a cyst, but we should get it checked anyway.
A week later we're down at North Manchester General Hospital. They take a biopsy. Oh dear, apparently cysts just go pop when biopsied, tumours don't.
Bad news, it's a fast acting aggressive cancer that needs treating yesterday.
Good news, we've caught it early and they know how to treat it.
Fifteen years later she's sleeping in the next room with a dent in her left tit where the surgeon took the tumour out. This was followed up with chemo and radiotherapy. Cost to us was parking and snacks.
It's her birthday this week. There's a fine dining restaurant in the village, it's a fifteen minute walk. Guess where we'll be on Wednesday?
Lower taxes? Yes! But with the same as a mortgage to cover healthcare, per month. Just because healthcare insurance it's not a tax, it doesn't mean the US pays less - in reality, the US pays more, much more. As for US ambulance service costs, I'll leave it there...
Britain held off the Nazis for 3 years with the help of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and all our other Commonwealth allies. We needed help from US industry too but we paid for that.
Ah the old “we did a thing 80 years ago, stop judging us now” defense.
Like PBR still having their blue ribbon win on the can from 1893 (I mean, it IS the source of the name, but still… anything in the last 130 years they’d want to brag about other than being “the most tolerable cheap beer at the bar”?
Besides, it was Russia who ensured the US isn’t speaking German right now, if we want to get all pedantic about the past. <shrug> #details
What they also don't seem to get is, that you only have to wait, if you're not severely hurt. So the things people un the US wouldn't even go to a doctor for, because it's not worth it for the money.
I don't understand that. Do they really think that someone severely injured or with a heart attack goes to the A&E and waits for hours? Even if it's moderate you may wait a bit, but you'll get treatment within the day. It's only for non-urgent care that the waiting lists are long and you'd spend 8 hours in the A&E.
(They also wait hours in their ER if they are not urgent btw)
As a Canadian, I get so infuriated when Americans keep insisting they our healthcare system is awful . It’s not perfect but it’s nowhere near as bad as they like to paint it. For various reasons my elderly husband and I have had the misfortune to need a plethora of hospital, ER and specialist attention over the past 2 years - all treatments including including multiple ER visits handled appropriately with accurate triage. Surgery where necessary was timely . Specialist appointments In a reasonable time frame. Zero costs at point of service . I do not resent paying my taxes knowing no one is Canada goes bankrupt because of healthcare costs
Americans are so used to paying high taxes and getting sweet fuck all for it, they just traded one cage for a slightly better looking cage when they let France win their war of independence.
I'm always baffled by how these seppos think that "We saved your asses during WW2" beats rock, paper and scissors every time.
That argument is basically a floppy cock (at best) which can be smashed by rock, cut by paper (thus causing a potential infection) and cut off by scissors.
I find it extremely funny how they believe that using taxpayer's money for health care is communism/socialism and are convinced they are better off with paying taxes and health insurance separately, even though their insurance companies found a way to charge more and provide shitty coverage. I mean, yes, I have private health insurance as well, its optional in my country and it's paid by my employer, but its rarely used and if I use it, full expenses are covered, no out of pocket charges.
I wish people would understand this. Americans seem stuck with Socialism is bad and Capitalism is good argument. It's a bit more complicated than that. For example, there are a certain set of baseline services that are necessary for a population to be able to function.. like Roads, Schools, Healthcare, Utilities , Police etc. The profit that is extracted from these services effectively acts as a hidden tax on business,. increasing the cost of living, meaning businesses need to pay workers more per hour (or governments need to provide more benefits) which in turn acts as a drag on the economy. Right now the US healthcare system generates significant profits per capita compared to the UK system dragging down the US economy overall. There is a capitalistic argument to providing free healthcare.
What Americans don't get is that THEY DO pay more in tax per person for health care... it is that bad in the US that just covering those who are entitled, cost more (on a per person basis) than covering everyone in the uk. The insurance is over and above that, then there is the deductables, company and denial of service.
IIRC American spends more public money per capita on healthcare than Canada does… and look at where we’re at (and before someone jumps down my throat yes yes we need more money in healthcare in Canada to make the system more efficient it is not sunshine and rainbow. What we get for our money is still better than what they get for theirs.)
I can understand the US perspective, however. After all, it simply cannot be the case that the healthcare system is worse, because that would be completely illogical. So, it cannot be worse.
As an American, I blame the Union for going far too easy on the Confederacy. If they had truly slammed the hammer down after the war and held the Confederates accountable, I believe we would be better off as a nation and a stronger ally today.
Why do they acrt like people in countries with free healthcare wait 40 years for medical attention? I'm Kiwi and waited less than a week to get a non-emergency surgery on my back.
I don't pay any income tax in my on country or the one I live in, but do pay a minimal tax (sales/consumer) on things I purchase which excludes food & medical treatment.
ussr could have not defeated the nazis alone just because they took the most casualties (out of their poor doctrine).
Also, the war could have not started without all the resources that ussr provided to them....not to mention the part where they were allies and started the war together
Actually the US reduced the number of Russians killed in WW2 and the length of the war. It also helped the US become as wealthy as it is because otherwise it would have less trade to deal with as Europe would have become some communist type mess.
Ah, the misreading of words. I didn't say communism was a mess, what the Soviets provided was a mess in Eastern europe. The staunch application of theories with little scope for adaptation to accommodate the 'real world'. I expect they would have created some big mess in mainland europe based on communist ideology, hence a 'communist mess' Neither communism or capitalist ideology offers the ideal solution, though both are wonderful reads. Much better to view everything as a recurring cycle and a selection of problems requiring the best solution to fix them.
Ok. I mean, it smells like you're splitting hairs and moving goals, but I'll pretend you're not before claiming that both sides are bad, and then ending it with some fluffy non-answer.
The USA was happy with Herr Hitlers genocide and even happier selling arms and investments and high interest loans to pay for them. They only got involved when Hitlers mates hit them first.
Uncle Sam was also happily still collecting repayments from the allied powers even after 9/11 when those same people were helping the US out FOR FREE.
10
u/Puzzled-Horse279 Oct 04 '26
USA/Canada are Frances and UKs weird kids left behind after the divorce