Gregory's Server*Boy, Spain and Italy are dong great, cheerfully said the American. guy who spent a lot of time in Italy and Spain
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24 comments
@TomF @bruces One of my favourite factoids is that at least as of a couple of years ago the UK spent roughly as much per capita for the NHS as the US spent for Medicaid and Medicare. Only the NHS managed to provide universal cover for that money. (Not (mainly, at least) Medicaid and Medicare's fault; e.g. Medicare is legally prevented from negotiating a lot of prices w/suppliers(!) - a lot of US healthcare legislation is pretty much corporate welfare)  @bruces it’s not just healthcare, though. The US is, basically, a bunch of well-armed homicidal maniacs compared to the rest of the world. As screwed up as our healthcare system is, it’s not quite fair to compare it to countries that are vastly more peaceful, healthy, not nearly as suicidal, and not suffering a fentanyl crisis.  The neoconservative Republican Party took 5-10 years off US persons for decades, and this accounts for probably tens of millions of lives (in person-years) in the US, and more globally from foreign policy. Probably the most psychopathic mass killers the world has ever had.  @jonathankoren @jripley @bruces It was a failed experiment, one that keeps being repeated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics @jonathankoren @jripley @bruces @skry to be fair the lengths to which they went to get him elected, including doing a deal with Iran to hold on to American hostages for longer so they could use it as a politician attack line leading to the Iran-Contra affair, you knew what they wanted to do was going to be bad for everyone but the rich & powerful. They sunk the economy, cut taxes, murdered millions of innocent people & destroyed the American dream, all they needed was a figurehead as president.  @aeva @bruces There are no year markers on the other countries here, so it's hard compare where others were at the same time. But it looks like the US was spending more than the rest of the world for the same results already back in 1970. The factor may have grown from like 2x to 3x the average of the rest though, but the problem was there from the start of the graph. Would be interesting to look further back. But I'm most curious about 2014 to now.   @bruces Aaand apparently NHS England needs to be more like the US because... Well, just because... (We all know the real reason is to split it apart and sell it to the Tory friends of the current cabinet - the current Chancellor even wrote a book how he would do it!) @bruces don't worry, here in Spain the 'libertarian' far right (and a good chunk of the 'moderate' center) is trying their best to ruin the public healthcare system in most regions and selling it piece by piece to their business cronies. All in the name of 'liberty', ofc. @Ignobleatrabiliario @bruces  @bruces To be more precise this should be adjusted for cost of living. Obviously salaries & rent being vastly higher in Switzerland the costs of anything that’s isn’t an iPad are higher than say Spain. Anyways the main point is proven on 🇺🇸 : private healthcare will ruin you when you’re sick.  @bruces there are recent concerns that the high life expectancy in the Mediterranean is just a statistical error after a lot of people are scamming their government for pension.  @bruces One of the major problems here is the American left is consistently misidentifying the problems here. The continued focus on things like M4A (whereas most of the countries doing much better here don't have single payer systems), allows the GOP and the pharma lobby to distract the situation and prevents the US from addressing the real problems. Some of those real issues are very questionable patent laws about pharma and excessive diagnostic procedures. Not a lack of M4A. |
@bruces People in the UK moan a lot about the NHS but holy crap does it deliver value for money.