Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium • Hacker News Board

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#131

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:31 AM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #119

spockz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care. Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kic…

Being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is another way to get decent care, but it's mostly true if we take "having a good job" to include being part of a family with someone who has one. The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that…

Actually medical debt is the norm for why people face bankruptcy in the USA.

65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#132

Post by wat10000 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:34 AM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #131

wat10000 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is another way to get decent care, but it's mostly true if we take "having a good job" to include being part of a family with someone who has one. The thing is, most Americans do have good jobs (or are in families with one), and do have decent health care. Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work. But that…

Actually medical debt is the norm for why people face bankruptcy in the USA. 65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/medical-b...

"Most bankruptcies are medical debt" and "most people do not go bankrupt from medical issues" are completely compatible statements.

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#133

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:35 AM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #65

spockz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is anecdotal from what I read here and the few engineers I’ve spoken personally. Having a good job is the only way to get good/decent health care. Even then, there are many surprises in terms of what you have to pay yourself and how expensive certain things are. Basically any chronic disease will be very expensive. And don’t lose your job either because then you can kiss the insurance goodbye as well, kic…

Not really. I was laid off and my daughter literally cut her finger off requiring expensive surgery and orthopedic stuff and my state covered all of it (over 100k in nominal cost) and our overall tax burden is less than most European countries. To be totally honest a lot of people in America don't apply for public benefits for whatever reason. Plenty of my colleagues decided to pay for cobra instead of using free Med…

The big beautiful bill just cut off 4 million people's insurance assistance including mine.

But nice, blame the uninsured people for not having insurance because of... checks notes.. the unrelated programs they don't qualify for that almost all states have for coverage for children. Not a very honest 'to be totally honest' no-example example.

You friend's dad will most likely be required to give up his home and assets if he survives the treatment. Many US seniors are now divorcing in order to protect their homes and assets from medical expenses.

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#134

Post by ajuc » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:42 AM UTC

WhrRTheBaboons wrote: post #97

ajuc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

87% of Poles own a house in comparison to 67% in US.

you got a source for that?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/home-owne...

Also my bad, it's 65.7% for US and 87.3% for Poland

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#135

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:42 AM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #121

toasty228 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Childbirth mortality, lifespan-healthspan, murder rate, paid vacation, worked hours per year, job security, etc.

Maternal/infant mortality, lifespan, and murder rate are all in a realm I'd call not-great-not-terrible, where we're toward the tail of wealthy countries, but not close to the average of the third world. Those also tend to correlate poorly with what we'd generally consider "first/third world." For example, #1 in maternal mortality is Belarus, not generally a country to be envied or emulated. Indonesia has one of the…

Yeah, us American's don't even want lower Childbirth mortality, longer lifespan-healthspan, lower murder rates, paid vacations, lower worked hours per year, job security, etc. Those things are just for crappy countries.

You sure defended the heck out of our big, beautiful, great again, rapidly declining shit sandwich. Not sure the euros will buy it (it's a shit sandwich after all) but we can feel less bad about our declining numbers/values/social contract. All we need is this lamp. And that's it. And this deck of cards. But that's all we need. We don't need those other things. And this, this paddle game. This lamp, and this deck of card, and this paddle game. That's all we need. None of those other things listed. We don't need none of that. What do you think we Americans are, some kind of jerk or something?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VbI5zcB8Ac

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#136

Post by ajuc » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:43 AM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #122

ajuc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US life expectancy is 79.76 years. That's 62nd in the world, lover than EU average, lower than many less wealthy countries. It's objectively not "working OK" for most Americans, especially when you consider how much you spend for subpar results. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic hea…

Please don't abuse "objectively." There's no objective measure of what "working OK" even means in the first place, let alone objective information that says whether or not we meet that bar. EU life expectancy was 81.7 in 2024. Two years makes one of them OK and the other not? What do we call a place like Hungary which is quite a bit below the US here? Or maybe it's OK because they don't spend as much? I also said for…

If you pay much more and get worse results that's objectively not OK. It means the system is inefficient and could be easily improved saving lives and money.

> Bad life expectancy is concentrated in the poorest Americans. Which is not a good thing to say about this country, but it does mean that most Americans live longer.

I've seen this defence many times, in different contexts, and it always strikes me as very strange. Why do you assume most Americans are rich? And why do you assume they are the ones that matter? Very weird. But let's take it at face value.

Looking at the graph of life expectancy vs percentile of income - US seems to be below 80 years for 50th percentile:

https://preview.redd.it/at-every-income-level-us-americans-l...

Which would make your point false regardless of the weirdness of it.

Another interesting graph: https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8...

I would not call it "OK".

> What do we call a place like Hungary which is quite a bit below the US here?

I could do the trick you did, sayign that Hungary has the same life expectancy as Illinois, and richer parts of EU has better life expectancy, therefore Hungary doesn't matter. That would be disingenious tho. It does matter, and healthcare in Hungary obviously isn't doing OK. It is more cost-effective than US tho.

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#137

Post by wat10000 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:46 AM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #130

wat10000 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the metric for that? The average American has decent health insurance. Our system can be painful and I'm not advocate for it, but the average American is not going bankrupt due to medical issues.

100,000,000 American owe $220 billion in medical debt. https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute/blog/healthc... In the US medical bills are half of all debts sent to collections. 41% of US adults have health care debt, 14 million had medical debts over $1,000 and 3 million had debts over $10,000. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi... 65% of US bankruptcies are due to medical debt http…

100 million Americans owing $220 billion in medical debt is an average of $2,200 per person. That's too much, but that's not bankruptcy levels of debt. 100 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in auto loan debt.

530,000 medical bankruptcies per year, in a country of 350 million. That number is too high, but the average American does not go through this.

Please understand the difference between saying "everything is great" and "it's not great, but it's not as bad as you say it is." I'm saying the latter, in response to comments incorrectly stating that the average American experience is that major medical issues result in bankruptcy.

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#138

Post by pseudohadamard » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:46 AM UTC

aenis wrote: post #33

penchant wrote: post #10

I don't get the hype around nominal GDP at all – looks great, but tells you little to none about the actual living conditions. Living in Poland, I don't feel richer than an average Belgian person (and I've had contact with many of them across the years).

Polish living standard in major metro areas are significantly above Belgian standards. I lived in Poland and Belgium, among a few other places, and I'd choose Poland over Belgium for a number of reasons. Its a great country, good infra, excellent engineers, high education standards, you can talk to anyone in English, the government usually does work, and if you want an appointment with a specialist doctor, it takes a…

Been to Poland a few times and it's pretty decent, everything as you say and unlike their immediate western neighbour their trains work too. It's a pretty nice place.

Now if only they didn't have a language that's made up mostly of WiFi passwords...

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#139

Post by ajuc » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:47 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #96

ajuc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US life expectancy is 79.76 years. That's 62nd in the world, lover than EU average, lower than many less wealthy countries. It's objectively not "working OK" for most Americans, especially when you consider how much you spend for subpar results. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ Now you can blame it on bad lifestyle, addictions, car culture, crime rate, etc. All true, and idiotic hea…

How exactly does the healthcare system cause people to crash their cars, abuse recreational drugs, overeat, and commit violent crimes?

Medical bankrupcy would make you homeless and cause you to abuse drugs and commit crimes at higher rate for one example.

Badly controlled medical system with bad incentives caused opioid crisis.

Bad incentives (government and healthcare system earning money on people getting sick instead of losing money on them) also makes it less likely for the system to focus on healthy work-life balance (paid maternity leave, paid vacations, good preventive care, education for healthy lifestyle) and instead focuses on expansive aftercare.

Re: Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

#140

Post by mmooss » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #24

mmooss wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there a lot of micro-nations in eastern Europe that have outsized influence over the union as a whole Would you give an example of when that has happened? > It just seems like the EU is too top-heavy The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others. > discontent What…

> The EU intentionally admitted many poorer countries, to promote freedom, security and stability in Europe in the long term. Without EU membership, they would be under pressure from Russia and others. This is a bit of a non-sequitur, at least as far as Eurozone's anemic growth is concerned. France and Germany stagnating isn't caused by Poland or Romania growing. It is mostly their own internal systemic problems. The…

Yours is the non-sequitur: I responded to a claim that the EU was 'top-heavy', which I interpreted as 'economic output is concentrated in a few countries'. Regardless of GDP growth, Germany and France output far more than some much smaller but faster growing countries.