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Not being shot also helps
Also not being run over by cars, and having the ability to walk/bike/take transit to get to places.
Netherlands doesn’t represent the whole europe. This isn’t the cycling/public transport utopia you think it is.
I’m well aware on account of living in non-Netherlands Europe.
It’s a mixed bag for sure, but Europe as a whole does better on both the metrics I mentioned as compared to the U.S.
Exactly. Live in the U.S and just trying to look for a place that puts you in non-car distance to ANYTHING basically shows you one of two options:
- Quaint small vacation towns that are expensive because they’re full of retirees. Won’t find great jobs or necessities there…
- …Or giant, overcrowded, crazy metros like Chicago, NYC, San Francisco. . .which are also absurdly expensive, dangerous, and downright filthy.
I feel like Europe at least gives you a way better chance of finding SOMEWHERE that works.
Yeah but most places in Europe don’t have 16 lane highways. And there’s quite a lot of old tracks that you can cycle along even if the main roads don’t have separated bike and traffic.
In the US you have the, guaranteed to cause collisions, grid layout and that’s basically it. If the Americans could get a hold of the idea of not driving into each other they could also have roundabouts.
"If the Americans could get a hold of the idea of not driving into each other they could also have roundabouts. "
It’s less the idea of not driving into each other, and more the idea that nobody matters more than themselves, so everyone else should give way.
While true compared to the USA almost every city in Europe is a bicycle dream.
Maybe biking is an exception, but for public transportation and walking, it is absolutely true that pretty much all of Europe is much better. It’s not even close.
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Universal healthcare might help but it is also–
- Auto accidents driven by car culture.
- Higher drug and alcohol abuse rates.
- Higher suicide rates driven by access to firearms.
- A culture of unhealthy eating that leads to obesity, heart disease, and increased risk of cancer.
Don’t forget the wage slave mentality: forced long hours, extreme stress in a fast pace work environment, the non-existent vacation days, and at-will employment
Is alcohol abuse more prevalent in the US?
The US alcohol consumption avg. is 2.51 gallons, or 9.5 litres per person and year. In the EU the average is also 9.5 litres per person and year. For drug abuse i know the US have the specific opiod problem, but that also seems to be a result of a poor healthcare system, where taking painkillers until addiction is chosen over actually solving the underlying injuries for monetary reasons.
For the alcohol question, I’m actually very interested in seeing a stat of solitary drinking vs social drinking, and how it affects these statistics.
For instance I know parts of Europe still hold a very strong comraderie “pub culture.” Alcohol is involved but so are strong social bonds.
The U.S has lately been making lots of quips about “wine moms” driven to sneak cheap chardonnay from the top cabinet, as well as the cliché portrayal of “working man who is so chewed up and burned out he needs a whisky and TV to sleep.”
Not a fan of heavy drinking in general, but I hypothesize alcohol paired with isolation is much more likely to result in abuse and depression.
Point 3 is just wrong.
Japanese don’t have easy access to guns and yet Japan has one of the highest suicide rates.
Same with Uruguay, highest suicide rate in America without having easy access to guns.
The suicide rate obviously has multiple contributing factors, but access to firearms is absolutely one of them. There’s multiple studies on this that will come up in a quick web search. In general, access to anything that makes suicide more impulsive increases the suicide rate. I say this as a person who absolutely believes that access to firearms should be the default state for those that want it.
This is a myth. The suicide rate in Japan is lower than the US, and similar to European countries. South Africa, Russia, and Korea have bonkers suicide rates.
Opportunity and desire both contribute to rate. Firearms increase opportunity so more of those with desire will try. Some cultures also give more people the desire so more attempts will be made using other methods. It is not either or.
Apples and oranges. Japan has an insane work culture that leads to burnout and depression, and therefore more suicides. Not sure why Uruguay has such a high suicide rate, but they also have a completely different culture than both America and Japan. The method in which you take your life is less important if you are intent on taking your own life. Guns make it super easy.
Access to firearms increases the rate of suicide. He may have worded it poorly but the point stands. The fact that other countries have worse rates of suicide without firearms notwithstanding, because if they had access to firearms, it would be even higher.
Plus less stress due to a culture that values family and recreation time.
As pointed out, guns are a means to suicide, not the cause. While I do believe in gun control, until we have physician assisted suicide, guns are some of the most reliable ways for people to have a say in when their life ends.
Take away the guns(the this specific circumstance, not talking about other gun related issues) and the suicide rate will maybe go down, but the rate of unsuccessful, excruciating, and possibly disfiguring/disabling suicide attempts will absolutely go up.
Absolutely. Sorry for the long post because I struggle to pare it all down but:
The suicide rate AND the homicide rate is because we live in an inhuman society that, underneath all the transparent PR, is practically egging you on to “just do it already.”
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It tells us that “unless you have money and power, which strip you of your humanity, you don’t matter, and in fact, nothing else does either.” We’re then shocked when people act like psychopaths.
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Everything once held sacred is now deconstructed with the most cynical of irony, after it’s been perverted and exploited for profit, of course. Traditions, communal rituals, the very concept of family, things that once held peoples together are now ridiculed and discarded.
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People see everything through the lens of a transaction, even romantic relationships, even marriages. We’re encouraged to be slaves to our egos and “pursue” fleeting happiness at all costs.
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People are encouraged to see each other by their different labels, and tribe up against other labels, because that sells more plastic garbage.
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Social media empires pervade our waking lives and manipulate us into releasing a ridiculous amount of cortisol that would shock our ancestors.
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Our jobs are totalitarian dictatorships that we’re forced to volunteer in so we can bother to exist within our borders of a country that is “so great and free.”
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Everyone is very suspicious of everyone else. It’s rude form to just go introduce yourself and talk to someone. It’s harassment unless you’re meeting other people through some commercialized app. If someone comes up and talks to you out of the blue, they probably have some kind of angle.
Ultimately… Guns don’t go off by themselves. We could have 10x as many guns in this country, hand em’ out for free even, and, barring negligence and stupidity, suicides and homicides would still drop dramatically if people weren’t constantly DARED to use them every second of their existence. On themselves, on “others.”
Our media also glorifies weaponry as some kind of ultimate problem-solver. So much power to change something, ANYTHING, at the pull of a trigger. And so many people are so desperate to just affect something.
If they had access to education, care, mental wellness, actually felt like they mattered, and weren’t obviously seen to just be batteries and cattle by the ones designing and “influencing” this culture. Those guns wouldn’t go off nearly so often.
When we have teenagers and young adults contemplating their own deaths because a contented existence seems so out of touch and the struggle for better so hopeless, what happened??
But the conversation seems to be less “How do we make a world where people DON’T wish to kill themselves or others so often?” And more “How do we stop them from doing it?”
Which, at its most idealistic extreme, will simply produce a hell-world of limbless, miserable torso-brains with no way out of misery.
Every day we carry on and try to love our neighbors, and make anything just a bit better, and forgive our enemies, and be content with what things we own, is a radical act of defiance against the principalities and powers that feed on the cultivation of our very worst selves.
Well yeah, the solution for how to not make people want to kill themselves is obvious. But it runs contrary to the goals of those in charge.
Whereas stopping consumers from killing themselves, that’s a big problem.
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Don’t underrate the amount of walking Europeans do compared to Americans. That casual exercise makes a huge difference. Europe is much more urban than the US and they generally walk a lot more than we do.
Not saying it’s enough to be in the best shape of your life but it’s really good for you.
About point 4, there is this really weird phenomenon that people going one way or the other replicate the same results without consciously changing the way you eat. Americans eating “unhealthy” in Europe get better and Europeans “eating healthy” in the US get worse.
Nope. It’s been scientifically shown that eating vegetables, clean protein, and olive oil drastically reduces your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke. Things that Americans don’t eat.
Checks pizza:
- Flour crust, vegetable
- Pepperoni, clean cooked protein
- Olive Oil, probably
Probably more like
-glyphosate adulterated with some flour, wilted veggies but who will notice once they are cooked.
-Old sandwich meat that has been returned, scrubbed, and re-mashed into pepperoni (my mom worked at a plant that actually did this)
-mixture of mostly palm and other oils, not guaranteed to be from plants and perfumed, branded as extra virgin olive oil for a markup over the same thing without perfume sold as vegetable oil.
Side note: fuck palm oil as much as fuck nestle.
Edit: why does formatting suck with every Lemmy app.
- two hamburgers for protein
- iceberg lettuce for vegetables
- cheese, more proteins
- special sauce - vitamins
- onions and pickles- veggies
- bun with sesame seeds - more veggies
McD’s serves a complete Mediterranean meal and no one talks about that!
TIL I’m not American.
Welcome to Europe, comrade!
What Americans do you know? Everyone I know eats all of those things every single day.
Turns out there’s more than just those 6 people in America.
The American diet is uniquely awful. Your social group is likely to include people in a similar socioeconomic position to you. If that means those people are eating lots of vegetables and clean fats then congratulations, you’re doing pretty well.
That does not describe the diet of most Americans. It’s rich in refined carbohydrates, “dirty” fats, processed meat, and very few vegetables, and the primary vegetable is the potato, which is also essentially just another carbohydrate. It’s better than deep fried flour, but not by much.
Pizza, all things considered, is fine, practically healthy, compared to the cheeseburger and fries that makes up the typical lunch for many Americans.
Most of the food we have easy, cheap access to is arguably addictive, high carbohydrate, low in nutrient, and generally just bad for you.
Which is why we have an obesity crisis and some of the worst rates of diabetes in the world.
Most of the food we have easy, cheap access to is arguably addictive, high carbohydrate, low in nutrient, and generally just bad for you.
This has been a complaint of mine, and my friends/family for a long time. You can’t get healthy snacks, and if you can, they’re expensive. I can get a payday candy bar, which is peanuts mixed with candy and a shit load of sugar and additives for - I guess they’re about a dollar now. But if you want a small bag of peanuts without any of the other shit, it costs 3x more money. Seriously, what the fuck is that about? I can give a dozen other examples, but I’m sure you get it already.
And then if you look for less or no salt, you might be looking at even more of a premium, or at least have it be harder to find
We’re talking about the more than half of America that is fat and sometimes diabetic.
Those people are less healthy than people who eat no processed food
Ed. Updated to make it more clear I’m not claiming most Americans are diabetic
I do not believe you that more than half of Americans are diabetic. That’s just preposterous.
Easy enough to check. Looks like 11.6%. Higher than the 6.2% of EU diabetics, but hardly “half of America”.
EDIT: Looking more closely at the European numbers rather than simply the average is super interesting. Turkey has basically US numbers for diabetes. Ireland at 3.2% has comparatively no diabetes. For all this talk about the “Mediterranean diet” and olives being a superfood, Spain and Portugal have very high diabetes numbers. I guess we should be talking about the “Greek diet” instead.
I think dessert is a big part of Spanish culture. Idk anything about Portuguese culture though.
Dessert is definitely not a big part of Spanish culture, there are a select few small deserts that are offered everywhere, but not that far off a yoghurt, spanish usually just have a coffee after food (a small espresso shot maybe some milk, but that’s all)
So is this article lying?
https://spanishsabores.com/7-incredibly-delicious-spanish-desserts/
They mostly talk about Italy and France as living longer than current nutrition models expect
The Greek diet that science cares about is the post war Greek poverty diet. Not much food, mostly whatever they could grow in their community, and pull from the sea
So fish, octopus, olives, leafy greens, tomatoes
It’s not an easy diet to follow.
It’s about 12% only a few percent more than the rest of the world. Obesity is another story tho.
I really meant the obesity rate. I know that doesn’t equal diabetic, but it’s on the pathway
I should change it to “and/or”
Yeah, obesity is a rising epidemic worldwide. European and Asian countries are importing American fast food restaurants & food options, and our exercise habits are changing drastically as we all become more computer-bound. The USA does have a bigger issue with obesity now though than most European and Asian countries (if not all of them). It’s sad, because it’s totally preventable, even with all of the shitty options existing.
A lot of the people that are considered medically obese aren’t what you’d actually consider obese, meaning they’re not extremely fat. At 25% body fat a man is considered obese, even if he’s a skinny looking gamer. As far as raw data goes, bodybuilders often get categorized as overweight or obese too. Any medical records that use BMI will show a muscular person as overweight. Anyways, what I’m getting at is that the data doesn’t accurately reflect what sort of condition many people are actually in, but being actually overweight and fat is becoming a lot more common now. Look at Chunk from The Goonies movie. He was considered very fat when I was a kid, but he just looks like an average kid now. We really need to push each other to turn over a new leaf… or eat one.
And pretty surely along with a lot of sugar and other bad shit. Anyone outside the US very easily sees how much crap is in your food, and how fat and unhealthy a disturbing amount of people are. Eating cheap in most of the world is usually pretty healthy, but in the US the accepted quality of fast food is very low so eating cheap usually becomes just eating that. And then there’s high-fructose corn syrup in almost everything, which isn’t the case anywhere else. And really weird shit like sugar in peanut butter, what the fuck?
Those are all choices though. Yes, they’re available and people definitely buy them, but those aren’t the only choices. Right next to the Jiffy peanut butter are some natural peanut butter options that don’t even include emulsifiers to keep the oils from separating. Just like fast food burgers. Yes, you can do yourself a disservice and go to McDonald’s, or you can go to the local Mediterranean kitchen right next door and get a semi healthy gyro for less money. Some areas do have limited options though, and I’m glad I don’t live in those areas. It can also become a challenge when you’re on a road trip.
Romans are stuffing their faces with cacio e pepe and guanciale asking “what’s a vegetable?” Oh yeah, the appetizer.
Urban Romans also tend to walk a lot more than the typical American does, and as it turns out, walking every day is extremely effective at combating weight gain and diabetes.
Walking doesn’t give you vitamins and fiber that you need from vegetables. That’s what this conversation is about: food.
If they were deficient in those nutrients they’d have higher rates of metabolic disease than they do.
Walking is part of the Mediterranean diet which os what OP is actually talking about, even if they are not aware of it
What are you talking about? I eat vegetables. I always have a baked potato and corn on-the-cob as sides with my steak. /s
Off work late? Hungry, but too tired to cook? Try 30 to 40 olives. 30 to 40 olives: an easy weeknight dinner. eat them directly out of the jar with your fingers. you will certainly not regret eating 30 to 40 olives.
So. Much. Sodium.
Why is sodium bad?
That much all at once and you’ll probably shit your pants.
More generally sodium increases your blood pressure and water retention, both of which can be bad, depending on your health situation, but are primarily uncomfortable for young, healthy people.
There is no research that links sodium to blood pressure, just an old unproven hypothesis (based on the idea that salt increases the density of water in the test tube) and a lot of advertising
I found 85 studies (in a meta analysis) that link them here. If you disagree, you can just say so though, you don’t need to hide it in a question. I would have given you a source the first time if I knew it was more than just curiosity.
Salt research is a mess: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9174123/
Those on a high sodium diet are generally on a high processed food diet, and that’s pretty unhealthy by itself
Those on low salt are generally on a whole food diet which is healthier (kale has little salt, salmon has little salt)
The people on the processed food are also probably poorer, which is independently a factor in poor health
It is a mess and those confounding factors do muddy things to a degree. That’s the benefit in a meta analysis, but of course if you put garbage data in, you get garbage data out.
The study you posted is brutal about studies that suggest that salt is not bad for you. It’s a pretty aggressive call out of industry sponsored “scientists” who publish ill-supported findings suggesting salt isn’t bad for people. I deliberately tried to find a less incendiary link, so as not to put you on the defensive. I’m not sure what you’re saying with it, but this now feels more like the Socratic method to me.
Lol are you for real?
This is the only reason I pace myself. That and if I’m going to binge I’ll rinse them first.
…this is why I rarely keep olives at home.
Good point–they make a terrific snack in the office or on the go! 30 to 40 olives… mmmmm
Olives? Just stab me, it’ll be less painful.
I love olives. I didn’t think you could have too many olives.
Once, on my honeymoon, I was at an expensive buffet. I found out just how many olives is too many olives. It was something like 35. More than that many olives is too many olives.
You can stomach more than 5 olives?
But it is healthy lifestyles that are leading to the increase life expectancy. Also healthy life’s make universal health care cheaper.
Are you sayong that this is a positivity spiral?
Meme is funny, but this is the true reason. And universal hc is affordable in many countries because US enrollees subsidize it. Costs of medications here are significantly higher, as priced by the manufacturer to make profits and reinvest. The EU is a secondary market they play in to not look like total dicks. (I have been a part of this machine)
If eating olives makes you live longer, I’ll just die young.
Yech.
But olive oil is amazing.
I hate whole olives, but a great olive oil with bread is one of the essential joys in this world.
I’m okay with it as long as the taste isn’t overpowering.
Why do you think Doug Doug chugs olive oil, like full bottles of it, on streams sometimes
I think there is going to be a difference between chugging a bottle of oil and putting a light coating on some salad or veg.
Upon hearing your anti olive stance OPEC (Olive Producing European Countries) have decided to have you executed. Once again proving that eating olives increases your life expectancy.
Worth it.
Ummm Olives and Olive Oil are good for you and does lead to better health outcomes.
Access to medical care is a lot better for you than olives.
Ummm Olives and Olive Oil are good for you and does lead to better health outcomes.
Best I can do is olive flavored canola oil.
No one is saying Olive in place of healthcare though. Just pointing out that you may not need as much health care if you eat right and Europeans eat better than Americans.
woooooosh
Not just universal health care but general lifestyle. But fast food, lack of amenities, and increasing reliance on cars will mean some Europeans turn into sedentary obese blobs and suffer the same health complications, if not expense, as their American counterparts.
We have fast food here, and in many places public transport is bad enough that you have to drive to not be fired for being late to work too many times.
It’s just that with most healthcare concerns, we don’t need to remortgage the house…
Mostly a UK problem though. Source: British living in EU
Also a problem in France. I have family in southern France, and there’s plenty of American fast food restaurants around, all very popular.
otherwise known as superior civilization. downvote away, barbarians
Bravo!!
I would love to not have to pay $800usd +$200 monthly insurance just to get a questionable mole removed :')
It is quite shocking that it costs so much. Is it plastic surgery because it is in the middle of your face, or something?
I had a mole removed recently on my arm. It took a general practitioner about 15 minutes and all he used were some alcohol swabs, a scalpel, a syringe with something to numb my skin and some thread for closing the wound. How can that be 800 dollars plus insurance?
I checked my insurance and they paid €127,02 to remove it in total and then it was sent to the hospital to check whether it was cancer and that cost €120,16. (Fortunately, it was not cancer.) It was completely covered by my insurance, I never got that bill. That is a really big difference in price.
I am not posting this to be mean or something. I just wanted to know whether the difference is as big as I thought (and maybe also how angry I should be on your behalf). It is really unfair that you have to pay so much and that it is not covered by your insurance. I really hope that this stuff will change.
They charge it because they can. No it wasn’t plastic surgery or anything. And yep it took less than 15 minutes. Private Healthcare is robbery.
Definitely sounds like robbery :-(
They take a little over one third of my pay check in taxes, which includes welfare (pension, etc) and healthcare, wealth tax and stuff.
You still pay for it, but when it really makes the difference is for the unlucky, who need lengthy and/or expensive care, they are supported by the better off, “mutual assistance”.
Of course some people want to reap the benefits of living in a modern society without having to do their part.
It is also much cheaper. The US spends double the amount of money per capita on healthcare than compareable western european countries.
Universal healthcare is so much more efficient. When Obama was asked why he just wanted to do the ACA and not universal healthcare he said, that there is 3 million jobs in the adminsitrative side of private health insurance, that would fall away otherwise. But those people could work other jobs and provide a benefit to the economy. The inefficiency of the US system is insane.
Garbage conservative misinformation whether on purpose or not.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/
The US spends wildly more per capita on healthcare than any other country and we have worse outcomes and worse service. Of course you still have to pay for public healthcare, it is much, much less expensive though. The US is wildly overpaying for worse healthcare due to corruption and market failure.
Actually a lot of countries I find are getting a ton of propaganda that private Healthcare is “good”. That public/universal is bad. They apply the misinformation pressure towards taxes and wait time for an appointment. Saying private will be their salvation.
Of course we know different. We know we wait just as long as they do(in fact usually longer), pay 3x+ more for shoddy service. That the doctors are tired going through hoops, they just want to treat their patients. But the news in those countries seem heavily pressured to say otherwise. While visiting i saw some fucked up commercials and even a 2hr long news episode saying private is basically a godsend. Really eerie. Of course no system is perfect, yet, so it’s easy to point at the universal “failures” … but private will exacerbate all of those issues. They don’t tell them that though.
So I don’t think the guy was purposefully being malicious, but definitely on the receiving end of some of that propaganda.
I really don’t care about what you guys do, I’m just sharing how it works so people don’t think it just falls from the sky.
You’re all so fucking polarized in your political standoff that you can’t even read a simple descriptive post without thinking THE OTHER SIDE IS UP TO SOMETHING. Chill the fuck down.
We know, we already pay high taxes in most states. For most people, universal healthcares monthly charges would be 2-3x less than they pay on monthly insurance alone. Then we also have added costs, premiums, deductibles we have to hit (usually pay in 3k+ yearly to hit the deductible) and then they can still charge 20% on any costs accrued. It’s hell.
I shouldn’t have to debate between cancer and food/rent for a minor, 15 min procedure.
Bub. Including the amount I end up paying for Healthcare, they take way over a third of my paycheck.
Edit- also hold up, you still get pensions over there??
Edit- also hold up, you still get pensions over there??
uhm, well, others do, of course Millenials will have to settle with just dying early
Yeah, no. They have 70 different systems and what you’re talking about is the Mediterranean diet.
… which is also quite problematic:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/20/17464906/mediterranean-diet-science-health-predimed
oh. Vox. that’s definitive.
Did you read it? The whole article cites papers in every paragraph
Yeah, I did. Seems like much ado about nothing.
Vox was started by Ezra Klein and has a good reputation in academia for explanatory journalism.
I know that the USA is by far the largest anglosphere country and so a lot of English-language discussion you see online is very American, but it’s a pain in the arse seeing this sort of generalisation about a wildly diverse continent just because a few of the more vocal yanks think the EU sounds a bit like the USA. Does OP think a Finn, a Brit, and a Greek all have a similar diet? Or a similar government, for that matter?
Which afaik still is in a scientific debate, and probably not in itself responsible for people in those countries being more healthy
Anecdotalish, but I’m not american. People I know work in the states for a period of time tend to mention they gain weight while in the states for a time, and then lose it when they get home, back to baseline, and they really can’t quite put their finger on why. I figure corn syrup. It’s like as subtle as the HP sauce, the stuff in England has a different recipe than the American, white vinegar, orange juice concentrate, corn syrup etc in the American one, basically cheaper ingedients, the English original has a subtler, less vinegar harsh, smokier flavour.
It’s all a massive conspiracy, just like how they said carrots are good for your eyes.
Yeah, let’s eat meat, smoke and drink heavily. 🤷♂️/s
As someone living in a country with universal healthcare I truly do wish it was like people online make it sound to be. Turns out you got to wait for a long time to see a doctor and you have to pay for it. Obviously it wont bankrupt you like it would in the US, but it’s not exactly free either.
Depends on the implementation. Every single EU country does it slightly different. Here in Romania it’s 100% paid for via taxation, the only thing you have to pay out of pocket for is heavily subsidized medication if it’s been prescribed, and wait times are actually pretty ok.
The downside is we don’t have any of the fancy new toys in any state-owned hospital due to a lack of funding, which means more complex surgeries are riskier, the latest and greatest medicine doesn’t exist here and Romanian doctors have to rely more on the basics.
It’s all trade-offs.
In the UK they sometimes send you to private hospitals for routine stuff, hip replacements, cataract surgery, and then just pay for it themselves and only the complicated surgeries are done by NHS staff.
That’s usually down to underfunding than anything else, though. The NHS, for example, is a shadow of what it was like 20 years ago, thanks to years of purposeful underfunding.
And the prupose of the underfunding is to create the conditions on which to sell a fully privatized healthcare system to the population.
Yep, and sadly to many it works really well. There are plenty of people in the UK that believe that we should just tear it down and put a private sector in to fund itself. Most of them are blissfully unaware that they earn below the average threshold, and with cost of living being what it is here, they would be absolutely fucked should they need treatment.
I’d say it’s funny how Americans love some European approaches to healthcare, while some European countries have bought into the US system as an option - but it’s frankly upsetting that people would turn their back on nationalised healthcare because some right-wing cunts want to underfund it…
I think most of those people you’re referring to that are making it sound so good, are Americans who are pining for it. And rightfully so.
And anyone implying that there aren’t wait times in the US are full of shit.
I love when you’re concerned about something with your health, the Internet can’t immediately diagnose it, and your doctor’s next 5-minute-window is in eight months, and you can’t just go to another doctor because that’s a whole drawn out process changing your “primary care provider” within your insurance that…oh, it just went up again suddenly for no reason? Hope you’re within that window to switch insurers…oh they don’t deal with your new provider, time to cancel that appointment and find another one.
It’s ok, this only will take you 2 months of phone-tag and broken websites and emails stuffed into the tiny space between work and sleep. (Remember all the offices are closed on weekends!)
Phew! You’ve done it! …Next opening is in 8 months. :D
It’s such a perfect and amazing system. We’re so privileged to have the unbridled, uninhibited, envy-of-the-planet freedom we’re gifted with personally by the blood of lots of our troops we send to die in far off lands over the decades or something like that. /s
(For their sacrifice BTW they get slightly lower wait times and better care…maybe…? Roll the dice.)
Also, don’t forget that all of that is inextricably linked to employment (COBRA is unaffordable bullshit).
Fucking awful system.
Another point is that universal healthcare creates a free (or close to) baseline that private healthcare has to compete with.
If there’s a free (or close to) option, the paid option has to be better to win people over to it. This can make overall healthcare better.
On the other hand, if there’s no universal healthcare the private healthcare can simple be as bad as it wants. This can mean that overall healthcare is worse.
I think even if you aren’t using the universal healthcare, your care is improved just by it being there.
Same. I live in Germany and used to live in the US (both with and without insurance). I would rather be here and support this system where everyone has access to Healthcare, but there is much I miss from the US. The care I got in the US (obviously stupid expensive) was better, easier and quicker. With that said, the care here is fine and enough and available for all but shouldn’t be viewed through the rose colored glasses of americans.
I think it is a bit unfair to speak of rose colored glasses there.
There is many people in the US who simply cannot afford an ambulance being called for them, if they are in a serious health situation. The people that have “rose colored” glasses in this context are the people whose options are “any healthcare” and “no healthcare”.
Yeah, I’m not sure it’s fair to compare the insurance they got through their employer at $400 a month with the basic free tier of a system of universal health care.
Fair comment, but don’t think that I don’t know how it is. I lived in the US for 28 years. The first 19 or 20 of which I had no insurance of any kind and was also fairly poor. I know all about not being able to see a doctor when sick or hurt.
Not sure how long ago you lived in the US, but things have changed in terms of doctor availability and wait times in the past decade or two. Many people can’t even find a GP because theirs retired (or stopped taking their insurance), and literally no other doctor near them that is in their network is currently taking on new patients. I’m not sure it’s any better here anymore in terms of wait times.
It was about 8 years ago. So a bit of time, but not soooo long. I know how it was, at least in my area of the US, and it is worse here in most ways.
That’s extra funny cause in France governement regularly talk about wine like it’s not any other alcohol and bad for health
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Waiting lists are long over here in the US too, depending on the specialty and region. We’re simply overpaying for the same quality healthcare while still failing to get 100% coverage.
This is incorrect.
We are overpaying for lower quality healthcare.
We have worse outcomes than countries with free healthcare.
As my father used to say “it may be bad, but it’s expensive.”
I’m a 30 year old who’s been waiting 14 months for a doctors visit to establish a primary care physician in the US.
I paid for a whole year of employer provided healthcare that I couldn’t even use the most basic function of. This system is great
As my father used to say “it may be bad, but it’s expensive.”
“You can find better quality but you can’t pay more”. Is the phrasing I heard.
I’d have to look at the most recent numbers, but the usual addage is that rich countries (US included) all have roughly the same overall quality of care, but they each have areas they’re particularly good or bad in. We’re particularly bad at maternal and neonatal care, but we’re quite good at cancer. It’s been a while since I’ve dived into the numbers, though.
Yes the exception is places like Massachusetts, which has some of the best quality healthcare in the world. But, you guessed it, they have a universal healthcare system similar to Germany.
You know what’s fun? In the US, we still have “concierge doctors”, who charge an annual fee just to have access to their offices. This is on top of the cost of insurance, assuming they accept it, and it can be thousands of dollars per year. This additional fee also lets you “skip the line”, since non-concierge doctors can have a many-month wait for “new patient” appointments.
I’m so glad we don’t have to worry about all those problems that come with public healthcare systems. /s
My doctor just moved and became one of those. I’m very mad at her for leaving cus she’s freaking awesome.
My son’s pediatrician operates her practice in a “direct primary care” model, which is sort of concierge-light with a significantly lower monthly fee. There are some catches, and it doesn’t replace proper insurance so I’m still paying for that on top of the monthly office fee. But on the other hand, our appointments aren’t a rush-job where we get like five minutes of face-time with the pediatrician and then shuttled out the door, and we can message her any time of the day to ask “yo what’s this rash” and usually get an answer (and occasionally a script for an ointment) within a half-hour, without having to go through the rigamarole of trying to get an appointment that’s usually so far out you’re better off waiting and hoping the problem resolves itself.
Is this the UK? As (company) private schemes in the UK allow you to jump the queue, pushing people who cant or wont pay further back down the queue.
Its also significantly cheaper than the actual cost of a fully privatised solution because its subsidised by the NHS.
Majority of Doctors and Nurses who do private work spend the bulk of their working week for the NHS, and a large percentage of them were trained by the NHS.
Do I blame people who go private because they do not want to wait? No, but its also not a good argument for further privatisation as further expansion of this system reduces capacity of the NHS.
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