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

euronews.com

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

#141

Post by nradov »

ajuc wrote: post #139
nradov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What a weird comment. Most people who go through bankruptcy don't become homeless. And most people who go through medical treatment don't become bankrupt.

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

#142

Post by ajuc »

nradov wrote: post #141
ajuc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What a weird comment. Most people who go through bankruptcy don't become homeless. And most people who go through medical treatment don't become bankrupt.

If it happens much more in US than in other countries - it contributes.

There's about 500 000 medical bankrupcies in US per year. That's huge.

Also - medical debt (not even bankrupcy necessarily) contributes significantly to homelessness:

https://publichealthpost.org/health-equity/medical-debt-home...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32513034/

> two-thirds [of homeless interviewed] reporting current medical debt. Almost half reported trouble paying medical bills for themselves or family members. Almost one-third believed medical debt was in part responsible for their current housing situation. More than half with medical debt incurred this debt while they were covered under insurance. People who had trouble paying medical bills experienced a more recent episode of homelessness 2 years longer than those who did not have such trouble, even after controlling for race, education, age, gender, and health status

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

#143

Post by flowerthoughts »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #6
ramino wrote: post #5

Lol Switzerland isn’t in the EU.

It isn't an EU member but it is part of the EU single market.

Barely. There are import duties on everything. Seems the old agreements that expired were hard to replace. At least they got the academic research funding sorted last year.

Part of EEA and Schengen, but those are not the EU.

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

#144

Post by tpm »

lapkaaaa wrote: post #2

How much money did they get from EU in last 5 years? Combine that with a lot of ukrainian migrants that actually work and open businesses you get this

Why just in the last 5 years? They got a lot of money from the EU since 2004. And that's fine, because the EU also profitted from their membership. All relatively poorer EU countries are net receivers, but not all of them are able to use that money effectively, at least some because of huge corruption. So good for Poland they've been able to invest that money into good causes.

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

#145

Post by troupo »

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…

> Should people with shit jobs have shit health care? No, and it's very unfortunate that this is how things work.

Coming back to my original comment.

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

#146

Post by troupo »

wat10000 wrote: post #137
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gr…

Now add in all the Americans that don't go to doctors to get treated because their insurance doesn't cover it or it's too expensive, and you're again arguing my original comment for me

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

#147

Post by troupo »

wat10000 wrote: post #50
sscaryterry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dying in the third-world from cancer means you die. Dying in the US from cancer means you probably will bankrupt your family first, and ultimately die faster due to the financial burden/stress.

Apparently HN commenters have difficulty with the concept of "metrics." What are the numbers? The US system sucks in a lot of ways, but it works OK for most Americans. If you're very poor, you'll have Medicaid and it'll cost you nothing. If you're an average middle class person, you'll have decent health insurance and your costs will be affordable. There's a slice of people in the middle who don't qualify for medicai…

> but there's a pretty big gulf between a significant minority who can face massive financial burdens from medical care

"significant minority".

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

#148

Post by troupo »

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…

> EU life expectancy was 81.7 in 2024. Two years makes one of them OK and the other not?

No. We call the place with higher maternal mortality, higher infant mortality, huge number of medical bankruptices, higher untreated chronical diseases due to insurance issues etc. despite spending significantly higher on healthcare not OK

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

#149

Post by ManuelKiessling »

rmason wrote: post #13

I spent some time in Poland three years ago and have not stopped talking about it ever since. It stood out from the other Eastern European countries that I visited on that trip. Had a lunch in Warsaw with a German friend who had relocated there. He said it was more Conservative than Germany and there was more freedom of expression. Over forty years of Communist rule and they were never able to pull them away from the…

Did you also talk about this:

> “Throughout OECD countries, men are much more likely to die from suicide, acute alcohol abuse or a drug overdose – on average, almost 4 men for every woman. This gender gap is largest in Poland, at 8.2.”

See figure 5.8 at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2020/03/how-s-life-2020...

What do you think might be the reason behind this?

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

#150

Post by ManuelKiessling »

nxm wrote: post #85
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be good to have real insights into how Poland is doing well just now, but (gestures at thread) it seems to be a lot of people bringing out their pet solutions. Is the boom related to the removal of PiS in 2023? Is it linked to Ukraine (businesses and people relocating across the border? Arms sales?)

No it’s not related to removal of PiS at all. Poland’s economy was booming under PiS

Did it stop booming afterwards?
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