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US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

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Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#231

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #207
DanBC wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My Apologies for my early morning grumpy post You're responding to someone who consistently misrepresents the facts about healthcare and healthcare spending in different countries, so a level of grumpiness is somewhat expected.

If there is a statistic you want to correct please suggest one. That said, the blatant misrepresentation of the US system as one where everyone is going bankrupt despite having health insurance makes me pretty grumpy too.

5 Year survival rates are a useless metric that don't say anything about patient harm from over-testing and over-treatment, or anything about all cause mortality. The US does better at 5 year survival rates because it's happy to cause harm to patients for no benefit.

You keep saying "The UK"[1] NHS denies treatment to patients, but you can't ever say what treatment is denied, instead pointing to stuff that's readily available. (Which is surprising, because if you actually cared about the truth you'd easily find examples of care that isn't available.)

I've never seen a post by you about the English NHS which isn't wrong. Doesn't it worry you that every single post you make about the English NSH is wrong?

[1] There isn't one NHS. There are 4 separate systems, controlled by different governments.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#232

Post by ggambetta »

ggambetta wrote: post #159
lonelappde wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?

Oh god, I hope the potential spouse bases their decision on factors other than net worth. I don't want to live in that awful world.

It's hilarious/sad that I got downvoted for saying that...

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#233

Post by [deleted] »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #224
anthonypasq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally with this system you wouldnt actually be paying a mortgage in addition to those taxes. Its created to prevent people from accumulating real-estate and renting it.

As opposed to real estate companies sounds like one rule for the "little" people and another for companies. Penalises accidental land lords when you inherit property from your parents grand parents.

[deleted]

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#234

Post by thatfrenchguy »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #144
TulliusCicero wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's GDP per capita is definitely lower than the US, by a substantial amount.

But about the same in terms of GDP per capita per hour worked. It’s just that the French have a different approach to work life balance. Also I think the average hides a wider disparity in the US.

Look at the median, not the average :-). It's hard to put numbers on quality of life as well: what does the median American eat versus the median French person ? How many vacation do they take ? What does they work, commute, family look like ?

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#235

Post by thatfrenchguy »

rayiner wrote: post #82
Cyph0n wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get from "slower internet" to "there is a pattern"? If you scroll two comments up, you'll see the most crucial difference: free healthcare. Healthcare-related expenses can bankrupt an entire family in the US, even with great health insurance... Then there is free education, but let's leave that aside for now.

That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t h…

> That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch.... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t have free healthcare. It has a significant 30% co-insurance which is usually covered by private insurance. Non-premium out of pocket costs, which comprise 2.1% of the 5.2% above in the US, are only a little lower in the US than in France.)

I grew up in the lower middle class in France, and I have what's considered great healthcare in the US. In France, I would never think twice before going to the doctor (i.e primary care) when I had a medical issue. In the US, I still think it twice even though my copay is not a big dent in my budget. And that's not counting WTF happens in the US if I loose my job.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#236

Post by anigbrowl »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #72
anigbrowl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you have an argument against the information and details provided by the article or nothing but bitterness as it seem.

I refuse to make the effort to refute bad faith articles any more.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#237

Post by ColanR »

DanBC wrote: post #230
refurb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rayiner’s posts tend to be some of the more interesting and well thought out posts I see on HN. I don’t always agree with his:her conclusions and I’m sure sometimes he/she is wrong, but the content is generally better than 95% of posts on HN.

Yes, most of the posts are very good. But he consistently misrepresents information about healthcare in other countries.

Of the two of you, Dan, you're the one who hasn't posted any source data.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#238

Post by rayiner »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #235
rayiner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn’t h…

> That’s also consistent with the pattern. 75% of Americans have either employer paid insurance or Medicare. For those people, premiums and out of pocket costs are on average less than the extra taxes they’d pay in Europe for health insurance: https://www.assembly.ca.gov/sites/assembly.ca.gov/files/Arch... . (page 18, showing 5.2% of household income spent on premiums and out of pocket costs). (Note that France doesn…

> I grew up in the lower middle class in France, and I have what's considered great healthcare in the US. In France, I would never think twice before going to the doctor (i.e primary care) when I had a medical issue. In the US, I still think it twice even though my copay is not a big dent in my budget.

That’s the point of co-pays, and that’s why France has them. According to the OECD statistics I posted elsewhere in this thread, per capita expenditures on non-premium out of pocket expenses (things like co-pays and deductibles) are the same in the US and France.

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#239

Post by vannevar »

adventured wrote: post #141
vannevar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be correct, the US lags far, far behind in median wealth, behind countries like Korea and Spain. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/australia-tops-median...

And the US ranks ahead of both Germany and Sweden in median household net wealth. Those two are almost universally held up as extreme achievers on quality of life and both have notoriously good economies.

True. It's interesting to note that the ratio of the median to the mean for Germany is similar to the US, where France and other high-medians have smaller ratios. Why is wealth more naturally distributed in France, but less so in Germany and the US?

Re: US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland

#240

Post by ineedasername »

sanxiyn wrote: post #109
ineedasername wrote: post #79

I'd be curious to see the proportional gap between the top 10% and bottom 10% compared. My guess is a much larger gap in the US, but I wonder by how much.

The report linked in fact does such gap analysis.

I guess I should have dug further than the introduction, thanks for point me further in.
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