“They basically exist to extort more money out of employers . . . “ That’s a blanket statement to which I object.
I see the unfairness, so I retract the statement. In Sweden, unions have a symbiotic and mostly peaceful relationship with companies. As you mentioned, unions do work to promote more professionalism. I apologize for the blanket statement.
@Babichev: Standing ovation!
And a side note on what's done with my taxes—being as we've got more than enough national defense, I'd be pleased to find myself getting more of my own money back in the form of, say, socialized healthcare.
You can have Swedish healthcare just by staying at home and waiting to go to the doctor. Wait at least three months. There's your Swedish healthcare, free of charge.
@UCpaaHVg6u0: You aren't following the links.
"In case of emergency, the number to dial is 112. Emergency care is available for everyone including those without state health insurance or without a GP, such as tourists. However, once you're recovered they’ll want proof of your travel or international insurance. Emergency rooms are available 24/7, and you can use them with or without a referral from a primary doctor. Emergency cases are treated immediately. Some counties may charge a fee for ambulance or helicopter service, but this is capped at 1,100 kr. You can also phone 1177, which is designated as a 24/7 advice line for non-emergency health issues."
If we had those things—only those—in America, imagine how many people would survive who die now.
@DaringSprinter You know why I'm cranky all the time? I'm tired. It's not nice to assign me links to read. My mind is racing and won't shut down to get sleep. It's not fun. I'll get to them. I think as a general principle, when you cost-contain sought-after medical services, especially within an aging demographic, you will see increasingly a problem trying to serve everybody who demands services in a timely manner. That's one reason why prices are higher in US. We demand service without waiting so long. You know, one interesting example of a fine tuned healthcare system is in Singapore. The percentage of GDP used for healthcare spending is quite low. The care is delivered through a combination of government hospitals, with private insurance, and patient savings collected the same way we mandate social security collection, but the monies are designated for medical bills. The conservatives here like it because it's a public-private partnership and it doesn't involve massive spending bills in the legislature. But it also relies on heavy handed cost containment which American providers would never allow to happen here. Anyway, I feel convinced that the more we ask our government to take care of us, the less they will take care of us.
@UCpaaHVg6u0: You say it's not nice to give people immediate access to accurate information (without burning oneself out summarizing it all)—I say it's not nice to ignore the info, make claims without evidence, and demand the other person do all the intellectual work.
Different interaction styles, I guess.
I don't feel the need to include a bibliography in my conversations. I'm not doing a dissertation. I'm expressing ideas. It's not that different from more tangible things that I might express, say after a cup of coffee and a look at NY Times.
I feel the need for some acknowledgement here of @UCpaaHVg6u0 's spot on accuracy. 👏👏👏
"I swear, the amount of political propaganda that stifles reasonable discussion of problems is probably a great strategy to keep us plebeians from actually knowing which end is up, and thus preventing us from sensible action. Like, Elizabeth Warren is going to tax the 💩 out of those "evil billionaires" so she must be on our side! Only thing is, the government is more of our enemy than any billionaire. I dunno about you, but my payroll tax has been pretty consistent and there's no way that a few hundred a month SS is going to keep me afloat. I'm screwed there. Billionaires generally offer us better deals on stuff, like Walmart, even if we are supposed to hate the Walton's for killing Main St. If the government actually came through with useful stuff, like affordable housing or healthcare... Then I might be open to their blather. But they cause more problems than they fix."
And more recently, "I feel convinced that the more we ask our government to take care of us, the less they will take care of us." 👏
@UCpaaHVg6u0: Well, there's the difference, then. You're expressing ideas—I'm investigating and building them. Only one of these goals requires a solid and immediate connection to the real world!
It has been fun talking with you, even if we've evidently been doing it at cross purposes.
@DaringSprinter There's also a middle ground. People may be interested in both expressing ideas AND building them, but without having a reading list. I know I personally read and listen to other people's logical thoughts, in an interest of building my knowledge and what contributes to my overall opinions and ideas, but similar to ucpa... I am tired and just don't have the energy to read article after article of required reading before each of my responses in the middle of participating in a conversation. My required reading is reading all of what other participants said (ie, listening to the other person or people, which not all people who converse even do, lol).
@ubergigglefritz: Yes, there is a middle ground—but I don't think he and I have met there in the course of this conversation, somehow.
It was still fun (and I learned a lot).
@DaringSprinter I understand (and I've been there). I was mostly just trying to offer my own perspective on agreeing with the issue with requiring links to be read, even though I generally consider myself someone interested in learning. 😇
I wouldn't say I require anyone to read the links to the data supporting my words, @ubergigglefritz.
Just that when I say "I'd like the sort of socialized healthcare they have in Scandinavia (link to description)," and someone comes back with "All Scandinavian healthcare is, practically speaking, nothing!"
...Well, in that case, it's obvious the reading hasn't been done. Facts aren't known. Talking is being done out of a hat.
"You," I can say, "aren't following the links."
That's all.
Socialized medicine is a pipe dream for this country. I would love to see universal health care but let’s have a reality check. First, the largest country in Scandanavia, Sweden, has just over 10 million people. The USA has 332 million and a highly diverse population. Second, they do not have socialized medicine. What they have is a cost-sharing healthcare system based on high taxes. Socialized medicine is when the government owns all property and wealth and redistributes these assets as they see fit—this is normally linked with totalitarian regimes such as Cuba, North Korea and to a large extent, China.
But the main reason we won’t see it in our lifetime is those countries have free medical school also funded by taxes. They have a handful of schools, while we have hundreds. We would have to dismantle our entire educational system. We do need education reform but entirely reshaping the financial structure of education is a monumental task which if done at once would lead to severe economic consequences. Medical school is grueling, difficult, and costly to thE school and the student. What would you do with research grant funding which also comes out of government coffers? What would professors be paid? How would the infrastructure be maintained? We still lead the world in research but it is tied to both education and business with both usually being involved through private and public funding. If public funding is cut or reduced for research and more of the cost of research is shouldered by corporations the cost of medicine will skyrocket. What about mental health care? These are just a few of the basic logistical problems that would need to be solved first.
In addition, the political will is not currently there except for lip service. Saying we need universal healthcare and free education is nice but we rarely see realistic solutions that account for all aspects of something as complex as health care in a country several times larger, more diverse, and essentially split down the middle politically than its Scandinavian friends. Couching health care in terms of “socialized” medicine is self-defeating because it is a non-starter to a large portion of the population who view socialism as the boogie man and they vote for people who provide the echo chamber for this belief.
If you want these things, vote locally as well as nationally. The people standing in the way of reform ALWAYS vote, while it has been shown that minorities and people under 40 have staggeringly low turn out for elections. Talk is cheap and the ballot box is where change is made. You didn’t like the Roe reversal? Then vote because many of the justices that voted for reversal were put into place by the last president who made no bones about what he wanted to dismantle and do. If you don’t vote then it is like political deja vu. Reform can be had; albeit in incremental steps, but it can only happen if your voice is heard through the ballot box over time. These Supreme Court justices are in for life and it will take time to replace them.
I am not advocating for the status quo; I am advocating for sustained involvement in our political system—vote, protest, write your representatives—it is the only way you will ever see change. But demographically speaking, the fact remains the people who would benefit the most from universal healthcare are rarely consistently engaged in the political system and as a result, the political machinery has made it more difficult for these groups to vote. Apathy leads to oppression and the fruits of our sustained political apathy have ripened in front of our eyes over the past 5-7 years and the crop is rotten. Forget health care, this country needs to recover its basic rights before substantive change can occur.
@FunCartel Your very first point is why we have states each with their own government and not just one giant blob of a country. The federal government is not meant to be in control of so many things that our country is so easily divided on, when considering how huge and diverse our country is. Voting locally and worrying about local change is so much more effective than trying to get the federal government to make these sorts of changes, and if your state makes changes and makes them work, there are other states which will follow suit (and others which won't). When we focus on the federal government, we actually slow down progress, because our country will never agree on these things for a VERY long time.
@FunCartel Back in the late 70s a family member was working for the state dept of health, specifically implementing Certificate of Need compliance among medical service providers. So, that means rather than neighboring hospitals or outpatient centers putting up such and such competing services, say MRI imaging services, they would be effectively rationed in a geographical basis. The reasoning was that it would be a race that would lead to overspending by healthcare service providers, which in turn would be passed onto consumers. 🤦♂️ So basically they turned away from the entire premise of our economic system. So decades later we see provider corporations and large hospital systems swallowing up competitors, leading to monopolistic control of services like MRI. Stack this on top of defensive medicine, subsidies not linked to effective delivery of care, billing according to services delivered rather than wellness outcome, Rx price fixing... You have upwards of 18% of GDP spent on healthcare.
@ubergigglefritz I agree with your post where you specified portions of @UCpaaHVg6u0 spot-on accuracy.
@Btown You created a marvelous monster in a good way when you started this thread:)
There is a possibility I would not be alive today if I had not had HER2 positive breast cancer in the United States because I did not have long wait times. I cannot prove this and I am just one person, but I am the person who counts to me. Not everyone in other countries gets Herceptin, the drug that matters most, until it is too late, due to it being more expensive than the more standard chemo for the common types of breast cancer.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 This is why I say it is a pipe dream. The war was lost a long time ago in many ways. Now Hospital Administration is a degree and it is purely a business degree which includes units on patient profitability. Patient profitability is a concept that has led to the practice of blacklisting. A hospital can kick you out for a myriad of reasons now days, including questioning care, threatening legal action, or sheer lack of compliance with their prescribed regimens of care. This can also be used as a smokescreen if they feel the cost of care has exceeded your capability of paying the hospital. They share this blacklisting with other hospitals and you will find it extremely difficult to be admitted to even competing facilities. We have truly become dollar signs and AI will soon be administering much of the treatment we are “allowed” to receive. This is a major topic of discussion among bioethicists today.
@achetocuddle It has certainly gone way beyond the original subject but I have enjoyed the posts from @ubergigglefritz @UCpaaHVg6u0 @FunCartel @DaringSprinter @Mike403 @JasonCuddles @Babichev @sunnysideup @Ironman294 @SweetiSammi @JohnR1972 @pmvines @LRCuddler101 @waynewv and .Albert a few more. Thanks everyone for taking the original topic and making it much more interesting.
@Btown Lol. .Albert for albeit or something else? Just curious.
Holy scheiss that was supposed to be maybe.
Auto correct? I hate auto correct; one of the most useless things ever invented.
I agree with that.
I hate it when it autocorrects my swear words. People think I'm obsessed with ducks.
U C M Ducks? M R Not Ducks. O S M R Ducks, C M Wangs? L I B, M R Ducks!
This could be a solution
This sign was seen in a fast food style restaurant. Tip to keep the burgers tasty? What?
10-15% for me