441–450 of 450 posts
If i were TCMS, i would not invest in Germany. But as a german, living in Germany, i am happy that they consider an investment in Germany.
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The UK per-capita expenditure on medicine is very low. It's also hamstrung by the choice a few years back to balkanize the NHS (stopping financially successful hospitals from subsidizing unsuccessful ones). My feeling is the NHS is a good institution in an unfortunate political culture. The UK is an essentially conservative state (they have been the ruling party for the vast majority of the last century) which is a p…
Right, but there is no concept of "financially successful" hospitals because no-one is paying for anything (success is measured in terms of input/output...the UK also does poorly here because we overpay massively for doctors, and underpay everyone else). The reason why medicine expenditure is low is because the system is managed for cost. Systems like Germany, US, Netherlands, Australia are more effective because the…
Sajid Javid literally reads The Fountainhead twice a year - and he's not much more neoliberal than his predecessors.
My feeling is it's hard to succeed as an organization when your boss really would like your organization to fail so the free market can step in. And that's been the NHS's situation for most of its history.
Nonetheless, there are inherent inefficiencies of private healthcare, even subsidized private healthcare, in that it results in horrific paperwork multiplication and information siloing. In germany, where I live, the amount of paperwork you need to get insurance is insane. There are literally offices full of people in every city doing basically senseless work just to make sure people don't get more healthcare than what they paid for. It's also a strong reason why the UK had such an easy time doing a vaccine rollout - the NHS could just send everybody who was in x age a letter. They also pay far less for medication, because the negotiating position is much stronger.
Sure, you can't get a homeopathic suppository from your heilpraktiker, or give birth in a giant bath that's shaped like a vagina, but it delivers a good service for a low price.
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Right, but there is no concept of "financially successful" hospitals because no-one is paying for anything (success is measured in terms of input/output...the UK also does poorly here because we overpay massively for doctors, and underpay everyone else). The reason why medicine expenditure is low is because the system is managed for cost. Systems like Germany, US, Netherlands, Australia are more effective because the…
Do you seriously think there is a single health secretary or government in the last fifty years that wouldn't privatize the NHS if they thought they could? Sajid Javid literally reads The Fountainhead twice a year - and he's not much more neoliberal than his predecessors. My feeling is it's hard to succeed as an organization when your boss really would like your organization to fail so the free market can step in. An…
The view that the NHS is being stitched up is another common conspiracy theory that is "common knowledge" and totally wrong. The NHS (and the BMA, particularly) have been given all the rope needed to hang themselves. Attributing malice to incompetence is at the root of most conspiracy theories.
An inefficient system that achieves patient outcomes that are many times better than the UK. I would take that any day. It is great to sit in a country that can provide good healthcare and marvel at ideological purity (it isn't ideological purity, it is conservative/reactionary thinking that drives everything in the NHS)...it is less great to actually be in that country, and be sick and not get treated. The UK achieves good outcomes given the cost...but that cost is very low and the outcomes are also very low (the UK's healthcare system is more comparable with middle-income countries, we are nowhere near most developed countries...and nowhere close to a top rank country like Germany). And btw, the UK is massively inefficient...we overpay massively for doctors (our wages are roughly equal to Germany), there are reams of middle managers in the NHS, any system will have inefficiency (and it is far more dangerous to have inefficiency in a system that isn't redistributive like the UK because it is largely poor people who pay for it).
And no, it isn't about insufficient homeopathy. I don't think people who have healthcare understand what it is like to have none. I am sick right now, I don't get treatment (in one case, the waiting list is too long, and in the other the cost is too high for the NHS to treat people). Most of my relatives that are sick, have either had bad treatment at one point that has almost resulted in death (in one case, multiple times) or don't get treatment for anything but basic illness (and then it is usually bad: for example, doctors will prescribe insulin for overweight people with type 2 diabetes because actually getting people to lose weight is too expensive...the UK also loves "public health" programmes because they are cheap, they don't work either but they are cheap). You call up for emergency treatment, you will wait 6-12 hours for help, and when you get taken to a hospital you can wait as long as a day to be admitted (most stats that are reported on this are fake, the hospital local to me has always hit their four hour target, I have waited in their four hours when it has been totally empty...it was recently discovered that all their stats were being faked by management). If I need to speak to my GP, there is so much demand that I need to call at 8 in the morning, by half 8 there are no more slots. If I do call at 8 then I will be triaged by someone with no medical training, and likely told that I can't speak to anyone. If you do go to a GP, you likely won't get referred to a specialist if the cost is too high (a big category here is mental health, people usually come into the system only once they attempt to kill themselves/have a psychotic episode/etc.). If you do get referred, you will likely be waiting months or years. If you need medicine, it will be low-cost and anything complex is either not available at all or is sold into markets like Germany with higher drug prices by UK pharmacies (for example, most cancer drugs aren't available...it is why the UK has the worst stats on cancer treatment in the developed world, by far...same for epilepsy). And the vast majority of GPs are exceptionally bad at their job. I have moved around the UK, I have had maybe 10-25 GPs, most are clueless...as an example, I know someone who had a stroke, and the GP wouldn't refer to a stroke clinic (and btw, because obesity/strokes are so common, they just give you drugs because everything else is too expensive). I don't actually know anyone who has had a high level of contact with the NHS who has a positive opinion of the level of care (this includes people working for the NHS too btw, the support that people have is mostly theoretical...until they get sick, and realise how bad it is).
I am aware of the meme about German doctors. But what you don't see is that waste is a sign that things are working (and btw, the UK still wastes more than anyone, I am in favour of wasting money on doctors...if the outcomes are there, but they aren't and nurses get paid starvation wages because of this overspend). If you attempt to reduce all waste in healthcare, people die. It isn't like other things.
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The last European war was over 70 years ago and today it is one of if not the most stable regions in the world. The idea that they are doom spiralling into authoritarianism is a conspiracy theory that is easy to dismiss.
Were you born yesterday? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#On...
Obviously the middle east or the americas would be a better location, I'm joking obviously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_conflicts_in_th...
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3nm and the future 2nm and 1nm is all with research from Europe.
just pointing out TSMC's innovation is on the process/manufacturing side. off the shelf equipment get you nowhere if you can't make it. Intel is the perfect example, it struggle with 10nm for so long and delay on 7nm. if all you needs is equipment. China already dominated the foundry business with its big fund back in 2014 before trade war.
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Yet how many people, even well-educated ones, have this balanced view on salaries? Most people see the bottom line on their pay statements. They "conveniently" forget that they still have to pay for health insurance, pension funds, etc. A big figure on the pay slip is a status symbol. If Germany wants to attract foreign high-profile human capital like the US does, they should create a similar system: Pay them their f…
You opine on a system you clearly don't understand. Each of these deductions are clearly shown on your pay slips. They can be calculated in advance from your gross income. In the end, the amounts you pay (reduced by half because of employer contributions) are relatively low. In any case, it's impossible to have a balanced view on compensation, because of the huge differences between the countries you compare. I lived…
So the employee sees the huge number being transferred into his account. He can go on the internet and brag about how great salaries in Germany are.
Also, you are wrong here: "Reduced by half because of employer contributions". This only applies to very specific insurances like private pension funds, where there's a split.
Costs for health care aren't split like that, the employer deducts the full amount.
But thanks for the patronising comment. American?
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You opine on a system you clearly don't understand. Each of these deductions are clearly shown on your pay slips. They can be calculated in advance from your gross income. In the end, the amounts you pay (reduced by half because of employer contributions) are relatively low. In any case, it's impossible to have a balanced view on compensation, because of the huge differences between the countries you compare. I lived…
"In the end, the amounts you pay (reduced by half because of employer contributions) are relatively low." I typed 100k/year into brutto-netto-rechner and it shows that Netto is less than 65k. Basically over 35% of your salary gets confiscated by the state, of course this doesn't include further taxes like 19% VAT you pay every time you buy anything at all. How is that "relatively low"?
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By well-working system I mean there are still enough checks and balances in place to make the rise of a figure like Trump or Putin very unlikely. And this of course is tied to economic well-being.
Well, they could use a term limit for chancellors. The position is not as powerful as the US president (the term limit is really the most important check to the president's power), and most people will agree that Merkel did at least a decent job during her tenure, but long office terms tend to fossilize the political system.