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Comment by ghostDancer | Hacker News Reader

It's an organized dismantle coming from the right wing parties, they cut resources and spending creating waiting lists and the deviate people to private services. The promotion of private healthcare it's all over, super cheap prices for now, till the destroy the system and then I guess we will get a super expensive scamming healthcare like in the USA. In Spain several hospitals that turned private were returning to being public because the super efficient capitalist owners could not make it work.

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In Poland we have waiting list for more than a decade and recently private sector pricing accelerated wildly while any complications are being sent back to public healthcare.

Right wing parties haven't had much say in western Europe as of recent, unless you've re-defined right wing. We're having the same issues here in NZ and it accelerated with a left wing govt.

NZ has never had a left wing government. NZ's government is neoliberal, which is not left wing in any way. Neoliberalism is in all actuality right wing.

If you're calling Jacinda Ahern a right-winger, the term has lost all meaning. Do you need the state to seize the means of production in order to call a government left-wing?

At least a few explicit examples would be a good place to start. I look forward to it.

Examples of what? You're just using a word wrong. There's nothing more to it.

Examples of any practical reason to categorize Jacinda Ahern's government as left wing.

https://jacobin.com/2021/05/new-zealand-labour-party-sociali...

I've seen those terms redefined so many times that now I think right-wing and left-wing don't mean anything really, outside the context of US politics.

I feel like left wing/right wing is basically now defined as “if you don’t believe in what I believe in then you’re right wing and wrong”

Defending social healthcare left wing - Promoting private healthcare right wing. In this case it's not that difficult.

Interestingly, right-wing . left-wing is usually defined specifically for the European political spectrum. The United States has a liberal - conservative divide, but it is vastly different from what we see in Europe.

If anything, left/right does not mean anything in the US due to the radically different Overton window. As a European, I would consider the Democrat party to be right-wing. If you want left-wing, you have to go as far as Sanders or AOC.

And even then, Sanders and AOC are 'third way' left, like Blair, DSK and Holland (who is left of the two others, but still). At most center-left.

Since 2000, left-wing parties have ruled for the past X years in:

Ireland: 0 years

The Netherlands: 2 years (Kok - 2000-2002)

Belgium: 3 years (Di Rupo, 2011-2014)

France: 5 years (Hollande - 2012-2017)

Germany: 6 years (Schröder - 2000-2005, Scholz - 2021-now)

United Kingdom: 10 years (Blair - 2000-2007, Brown - 2007-2010)

Austria: 18 years (Fischer, 2004-2016, Buren - 2016-2017, Van der Bellen - 2017-now)

So yeah, with the exception of Austria and arguably perhaps the UK, western Europe is pretty right-wing. In general, Western Europe has been very heavily on the neoliberal train since the 90s, including a significant amount of privatization. The current state of healthcare is a direct result of this.

Agreed. One correction => Blair 1997-2007

I appreciate the effort you put into compiling this list, but need to point out some flaws:

You listed the Austrian presidents rather than Prime Ministers. Under normal circumstances, the Presidents dutys are mostly of representative nature. They don't need to come from the same party and are not elected at the same time.

> left-wing parties have ruled for the past X years in ...

The Schüssel governments from 2000 to 2007 were composed exclusively of right-wing parties, every government since then was a coalition of both right- and left-wing parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Austria

It's not a matter of left-wing or right-wing. It's a matter of whether the ruling party is neo-liberal. In the US, both parties are neo-liberal. In Canada, both parties are neo-liberal. There is only a small difference in how neo-liberal these parties are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

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