I had a health crisis in France
latimes.com
I had a health crisis in France
1–10 of 312 posts
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#2But that's socialism, and the USA will never tolerate socialism.
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#3It'll be a long time until the entire USA implements socialised healthcare (if it happens at all...) but are there any individual states which have something resembling a single-payer system, or is this an issue where they all have roughly the same system?
Also for some reason this reminded me of a BBC story I read a while back - where "Heavy Legs" is described as a medical condition that only exists in France: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#4But that's socialism, and the USA will never tolerate socialism.
Who knows, if someone pitches this to Donald Trump and calls it "TrumpCare" he may be vain enough to push it all the way :)
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#5For a Western European this is the normal.
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#6> My individual burden, however, is far more reasonable than
> an American might assume. I pay an annual income tax of
> about 23%.
How comes this number is that low? Tax revenue in France account for about 48% of the country's GDP[1].
I'm living in Belgium, and my payroll tax is already higher than these 23%.
--
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#7But that's socialism, and the USA will never tolerate socialism.
But only if it's called socialism. If it can be called something else, then it will be accepted. In my experience, US citizens (not all, obviously; I'm massively generalising) have been conditioned to be against things labelled socialism, but the level of economic and political knowledge amongst the general public is such that if you don't call something socialism, it is judged on its own merits without people realising.
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#8The US spends more per capita on health care than other OECD countries, even ones with universal public health care:
http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/snapshots-health-car...
And yet the US has lower life expectancy than those countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#9Medicine is one of those few fields the "socialized" approach is actually the better one. Of course you would prefer a I-don't-want-to-pay-for-others* stance when you are young and healthy (ie provided you were not born with a genetic condition or something similar), but once you start aging and caring, you start appreciating why Medicine as practiced in Europe makes much more sense in the end.
*even Ayn Rand allegedly made use of the "social benefits" when the shit hit the fan and it's perfectly alright (https://www.quora.com/Did-Ayn-Rand-really-accept-Social-Secu...)
Re: I had a health crisis in France
#10> My individual burden, however, is far more reasonable than > an American might assume. I pay an annual income tax of > about 23%. How comes this number is that low? Tax revenue in France account for about 48% of the country's GDP[1]. I'm living in Belgium, and my payroll tax is already higher than these 23%. -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
Income tax is not the only tax.