Here is where I realise how happy I am to live in a country with a pretty good educational system, which is free to any citizen who qualifies to enter.
Commercial healthcare and education seem to really bring about the worst aspects of a market economy, in some countries. Not sure where it works well, it maybe somewhere.
I specified my country to head off anyone replying that the healthcare problems I mention aren't an issue where they live.
I was not implying that a complex life in a jet ski or comfortable suburban existence would make you happy, I was implying that giving up your education or watching your children die for lack of medicine would make you unhappy.
Also here in Spain, the public healthcare system is just fine. I wouldn't use private. Public is good enough.
But it's more about peace of mind. What if I lose that high paying job? I'll suddenly be in trouble for medical fees. Or income for that matter.
That kind of security is really great to have. I wouldn't want to live in a country without it. The US has a kind of "every man for himself" attitude. It feels like it stems from the 'frontier' mindset. You can climb really high but also fall all the way down. And that's fine, to each their own. But it's not for me. I'm happy to just have enough to live comfortably and have a nice job and not have to worry too much. This is also why I'll never be an entrepreneur. I'm very happy being a salaried employee with the lower income but the rights and stability that come with it.
The rest of the planet doesn't consider publicly-run higher education and health-care to be a "political revolution". We consider them an essential part of any healthy society and not to be touched even under the most right-wing of governments.
Well, I also like that my neighbors and community also have access to no-pay-at-point-of-use healthcare, low cost education options and guaranteed time off. Makes for a relatively relaxed and content population!
If you don't invest in (or put up lots of barriers to) the health and education of the entire community, then you are going to have an unhealthy and uneducated community.
That's not to say we don't have many problems, but in my personal experience it's a lot less than the US in those regards.
The article implies that most people in Norway believe that individual rights are less important than the average welfare of all individuals taken together and that personal lives are less important than the well-being of the collective. This is quite logical, because it is the acceptance of this view of the world that makes their system possible.
A similar view is at the root of most governments around the world today and it certainly underpinned the socialist/communist block in the 20th century, though to a different degree. The United States has been a notable exception.
But let's focus on Norway and the idea that it can serve as a model. To take a small example, who believes that a skilled doctor is genuinely happy to have half of his income taken away by law and given to the janitor of his hospital, so that the latter receives the roughly same pay? Well, the surveys say that the level of happiness in Norway are very high, so the doctor must be happy. Happiness measures aside, does that make sense? Is the doctor genuinely happy or has he been told by generations of intellectuals what he should feel happy about and what he should feel guilty about? This is a question that everyone who nominates Norway as a model for the US should answer logically.
You say that as if socialised medicine is somehow novel and untested? Look at most of the Commonwealth countries, there are no shortage of students applying to study medicine and they still get paid well. Take your blinkers off - or leave them on to be honest, I'm super happy with my socialist healthcare (which I supplement with cheap private cover for faster elective procedures).
Depends on the countries. Socialized healthcare in my country is notoriously terrible. Perhaps those other countries would be even better with privatized healthcare.
Health care could hardly be any more socialized in the USA; it's been the most controlled industry in the country for decades. Changes from subsidized finance to tax finance under Obamacare are superficial and accomplish little.
The hope has to be that we can transition from bad, counterproductive state control to good state control.
Bureaucrats have finally forced the medical colleges to allow new schools and expansions to train new doctors after decades of drastic undersupply so there is hope.
Meanwhile in most of the developed world, US healthcare is held up as the ultimate horror, and most people are satisfied with socialised care even when additional private insurance is available.
in a lot of countries having a government provided health care system (with private if you wish to pay more for quicker/better) is Normal rather than a political idea that only 1 side is allowed to support.
I mean the elephant in the room here is socialized healthcare, no? It costs less than our system, it breaks the tie of employment to healthcare that we labor under here in the states so people are more free to leave crappy jobs, which is only made better by a much more comprehensive social safety net overall. Irrespective of your own personal economic position, having a society that's ready to actually help people who need it vs paying them lip service at election time (or seemingly genuinely trying to kill them, depending your party affiliation) is going to make a massive difference in who's better off.
There are also other differences too, things like many more walkable cities, more modern infrastructure and public transit. I could go on.
Like I'm doing fine enough here but I wouldn't even kind of defend how we live over here. America is in many ways the international version of a person who makes a lot of money but is still check to check eating ramen most nights and playing video games because they spend it all on their hobbies and stuff. It's a way to live but I wouldn't call it a good one.
So too in the US. You are probably not aware of the insane socialized mess that is the US health system due to initial good intentions.
Medicare, Medicaid, govt supported controls on number of new doctors per year, so much regulation and red tape.
The US govt spends more on healthcare than most other nations. If that isn’t socialized medicine, I don’t know what is.
Thankfully we are just indirectly socialized unlike our neighbors to the North who suffer from many things like longer wait times for emergencies and vital surgeries.
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