You cant take away someone's health, career, life, and leave them in constant pain for years and years, deny them assistance, and then expect them to live like any young/healthy person fighting in the grind for the "right" to pay for life, and then act shocked when they are forced to opt out of life. But if you bring this up to people all they have is the idea of locking you up in a mental hospital and adding more 6-7 figure bills. I want to live. America isn't going to let me. Most days anymore I am resigned to it and glad it will be over...but some I am angry af. The only thing I will miss of this miserable place is my cat, the only good thing in my life, and I cannot even assure her future here as the people I live with aren't responsible and nobody adopts around here. Maybe I will win the lotto before end of year and can move us both abroad.
I'm a strong supporter of the socialised health care system we have in the UK - its not perfect, but I think it is notable that the book by the founder of the UK NHS was called In Place of Fear - I personally don't want anyone to suffer the kind of fear that comes with the problems you have had, in fact I'd agree with Bevan that:
"...no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means"
While I appreciate you as an individual, the above has objectively been proven false. Throughout this entire thing from the first surgery that took me out, no system or person here who was in a position to stop the "bleeding" and help me rebuild, or provide true safety to live, would do it. There were many people, programs, and moments where it could have turned around and they refused. Nobody here did what the promised, what they should, what was right. It was a series of blame and selfish rewriting of history and THAT is what really depressed me. Only one kind stranger from abroad offered a truly potentially workable situation a while back and my health prevented that from happening at the worst time. So the reality is whether I am here or not in a day, month, or year doesn't matter and won't matter. The ability to assure I would be has been actively denied repeatedly. Proof is in the pudding. I'd joyfully grab any realistic plan and take my cat and live a life...but there isn't one. Nobody chooses this...its forced upon them.
I am currently in that exact position. I have very bad RSI and can no longer write software full-time. On better days, I can drive and do errands. I've spend roughly $40k out of pocket on treatment so far, and my COBRA health insurance runs out in a year. I had looked into speech-to-text, but now I have bad TMJ syndrome and talking is difficult. I'm honestly very afraid for my future.
Not everything is unicorns and roses in Europe. They have massive structural issues.
Yes, in the majority of societies "free" healthcare is free at point of access and subsidised by taxes. Much like trash collection or road renovations. It's underlying infrastructure for a healthy society.
FWIW the US actually pays more taxes towards healthcare than europe, but that's because your medical industry is price fixing and gauging.[0]
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/16/americans...
Mandating health insurance had predictable results. It is expensive, and no employer will pay for it if it makes up a significant portion of total compensation.
Highly paid employees: already have health insurance
Low paid employees: never going to get health insurance
Every employee ends up in one of those two categories. As needed to comply with the law, hours will be adjusted up or down. If a person worked 40 hours at a modest wage, there were two possible outcomes. One is that hours are cut below 30, keeping the low-paid employee without health insurance. The other is that the employee ends up with enough hours to be highly-paid, but there is a limit to the hours a human can work and there may be a higher overtime rate that prevents this solution.
As an example of the less-common solution, suppose the job was $18 per hour for 40 hours. That could be changed to be $8 per hour ($12 during overtime) with a total of 80 hours per week, with healthcare included.
It's easier to just cut hours below 30.
https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/youth-unemployment-rate
https://tradingeconomics.com/portugal/youth-unemployment-rat...
Everything is small in Europe, people seem to have bare minimums.
I suppose it's all about perception.
Edit- it seems like it depends on which quality metrics you use. I used "Stuff", other users choose life expectancy, and vacation time.
If you consider "life" as a bare minimum, we are worse off.
But what do you mean with smaller?
Cars are much smaller, both because the infrastructure is not built for large ones and the huge US models are kind of pointless.
There are few large stores and many smaller stores instead. There are not many skyscrapers, in part due to relatively strict building regulations in the big cities.
There are only two really big metropolitan areas: London and Paris.
Also, there might be less of an interest in ostentatiousness. Bigger isn't always better.
That said, the US has a GDP per capita that's almost twice as high as the EU average. And even the most well-off countries, which had almost reached parity, have fallen behind very considerably since the 2008 financial crisis. The US economy has grown a lot since then, while the EU mostly remained stagnant.
(note that GDP/capita is a pretty bad measure, but it gives some idea)
But your points are valid, there's not many large cities, people tend not to have huge homes or sprawling lawns.
Larger income inequality leads to more luxury: expensive cars, bigger mansions, etc.
Case in point: I saw way more luxury cars in Moscow than in New York or London, while large parts of the city are incredibly ugly and poor.
For instance, my salary in a small Swedish city is 45,000Kr/mo. Of which I pay 6,000Kr in rent and about 3,000 for all my other bills combined (including gigabit internet). However there’s an unseen amount that my employer pays; my 45k salary is more like 90k in company costs.
Since the city is small, I would think of this as comparative to somewhere like boulder, CO. So you begin to get an idea of what purchasing power really is here and what things are paid for automatically (like insurances).
There’s also a large differentiation in regards to social norms (25 days vacation by law, income support in the event of unexpected job loss, generous maternity/paternity leave) muddying it even more.
EDIT: This spurred me to do some research and I came across this analysis by Pew research: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-... TL;DR: no matter how you measure, the standard of living is better in the US than in Europe.
"Everything is small", in what sense? Where in Europe?
If you mean: houses are small, yup, it's not common to have sprawling suburbia with rows and rows of single-family houses with a garage, driveway, lawn and backyard. At the same time, these are not necessities, apartments are small but you have plenty of access to public areas such as parks and squares where most people will congregate.
What are your bare minimums? What I notice here is people living much more sustainably compared to the US, consumerism still exists but it's not exacerbated by people buying every kind of gadget and permanently installing or fixing their houses with new stuff. Cars are necessities for people that live far away from the cities and/or have families, the rest can live comfortably without a personal car (and some families I know that live close to the cities depend entirely on car sharing).
It's a very different lifestyle and as an immigrant here, having visited the US and coming from a country very influenced by the American-way-of-life I'd say that it's much much better, even if you can't buy so much shit.
They do get to travel more and pay less for healthcare, but I do not think it is a trade.
Without specifics it's quite hard to judge what you are comparing against.
Now, not everyone in the US does those things; welding is particularly time consuming and expensive, for example, but I think most people I know in the US could take up welding if they really wanted.
To me it seems that the US is becoming a Latin American country, driven by the same forces that apply south of the border. The reasons that created the endless drug war and the original "banana republics" ruled by the United Fruit Company.