Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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I'm American and I don't disagree that America has serious problems, but you should be leery of trying to compare your country with another country, especially if you haven't lived there and have only read about it.

I was a military wife for about two decades and had two children during that time and it cost next to nothing to spend two or three nights in the hospital to give birth and then all outpatient visits for me and my kids were completely free. I was friends for a time with a Canadian woman who used to openly hate on America and one of her criticisms was we have apparently a weirdly high percentage of citizens who have served in the military.

So I sometimes wonder how many American children get born while one of their parents is in service. And I spent years trying to figure out how to explain to other Americans what military life and military compensation is like and I eventually gave up. Civilian jobs have relatively high pay and few benefits. Military jobs have relatively low pay but high benefits and it's an apples to oranges comparison and I know when I was a military wife, anyone who wasn't making a career of it seemed to be trying to have all the kids they planned to ever have before leaving service because it's so cheap to have a kid while in service.

I desperately wish America would fix some of its problems. But I genuinely wonder just how bad it really is when I never see mention of details like that and when I have looked for data on just how many Americans get some portion of their medical care covered as military dependents for some portion of their life, I have been unable to turn up stats. So I don't know what to conclude, honestly.

But if I cannot figure it out as an American, my guess is your opinions amount to prejudice, not informed analysis. And although I know why so many people in the world have opinions about the US -- because the US is very influential, so it impacts them -- I don't run around telling other countries how to fix their social problems and it bugs me that so many foreigners feel they know what is best for us, often without ever having lived here.

As a first approximation from a quick google search, approximately 2.75% of US children are born to one or more parents who are in the military. This was not hard information to find, but I can't vouch for its veracity; the language used is sloppy and without sources.

A bunch of pages all say the same line that 100,000 children are born each year to "military families", or about 1.5 million between 2003 and 2016. Google also says that about 3.65 million children are born in the US each year. I used division to reach the percentage. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it gives us some idea.

As to your wider point, the idea that you as an American have been unable to find this information and therefore anyone who is not American cannot have a valid observation of the issue because they are missing this critical info is less than useful.

That's not at all what I talked about wondering about:

I have looked for data on just how many Americans get some portion of their medical care covered as military dependents for some portion of their life

> That's not at all what I talked about wondering about:

You did talk about wondering about it:

> I sometimes wonder how many American children get born while one of their parents is in service.

The part where I said I was unable to turn up stats was not the part you rebutted with stats. It's the part I quoted. It's a disingenuous argument to smear me like I am stupid and can't find birth stats when I didn't say that's what I looked for and failed to find.

This is a surprisingly harsh take on what appears (from the caveats included) to be a well intentioned attempt to add some statistics to the conversation.

> disingenuous argument to smear me like I am stupid

I don't know what this is about. My post has nothing like that.

The thing I disagree with is that you think being an American gives you the unique privilege to weigh in on the matters of America, and that people in other countries should just keep their nose out of it. And that not knowing one single detail about something fairly inconsequential disqualifies people from having an opinion.

Attack their argument. You don't get to disqualify them from having one because of where they live.

A quick search shows that TRICARE has 9.5 million beneficiaries, so ~2.8% of population based on 2020 census. I imagine the number you're looking for isn't far off from that.

Okay, I know HN is full of pedants who think a quick google can readily prove I'm stupid, but that's not what I was asking.

My sons are not currently TRICARE beneficiaries but were for much of their lives.

I have a serious medical condition. One of my sons has a serious medical condition. We got many thousands of dollars in value out of being military dependents for a lot of years. But, no, they are not currently beneficiaries.

I wouldn't begin to know how to figure out an answer to a question like "Of all Americans currently alive, what percentage of them has spent some portion of their life in military service or as a military dependent?" much less a question like "If you could place a civilian medical cost equivalent on the medical care they received, often for flashing their ID with zero bill, what would the total be or what percentage of their lifetime medical costs does that represent?"

And that doesn't begin to get into questions like "And can you even begin to measure the impact on health of having secure housing, of one parent participating routinely in exercise as part of the job, etc?"

I don't know how to answer such a complex question at all. You can google all the live long day and you won't be able to tell me the answer. Sorry.

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