And France is lining itself up for bailouts because it can't support it's system. I've been focused mainly on the UK health care system and it's terrible. The horror stories are endless. Friends in the UK have also concurred.
Greece was broke before it joined the UK, 40%+ on the government payrolls. Yes, socialism did break Greece but it took decades to run out of other people's money and admit it has to be redone. And so on and so forth.
No we do not have a free enterprise system we have Medicare and that's a huge portion of our health care system taken over by the government and so badly set up it's set to become the entire US budget in the future and is on it's way to bankruptcy....or so said President Obama when he once indicated he was interested in helping it. But lately he's used it as a piggy bank and hastened it's collapse.
Some of us ARE paying attention to the details.
Uh, last I checked it still was. Until this law. There is no law that requires employers to provide health care. There is a ton of regulation, but it's an insurance industry, what would you expect? And the regulation fails because - wait for it - the FREE MARKET doesn't work for health care. If your insurance company tries to bilk you on their policy for your home that was burnt down, it's pretty cut and dry, and still fairly cut & dry for more complex insurance issues - because the outcomes and risks are, to a large extent, predictable. We know how many hurricanes we'll get on average, how many houses will burn down a year. But medical conditions and treatment are a lot, lot less cut & dry, particularly because we tend to ascribe a different set of values to human life than we do to property.
As for how Europe's doing - it sucks. But the cause wasn't socialism. The cause was the real estate bubble in Spain, and the idiotic policy to create a common currency without a common fiscal policy. As far as I know, their health care systems are all doing just fine and well-funded. The Europeans, about 50 years ago, decided to trade growth for social stability and higher quality of life for the middle and lower classes. Growth gets killed by taxes and business regulations, but the vast majority of people are quite content because they have a higher standard of living than they did before, and arguably higher than most Americans. But don't even get me started on how hard it is to be an entrepreneur in France - I used to argue with my French friends about it all the time. Arguably, any person in the U.S. earning less than $75,000 a year would be better off living in Europe. They would get free health care, free education, and better unemployment benefits. Americans like you have a different value system that's all. Thus far, our political history shows that we prefer the "chance" of riches and severe boom/bust cycles rather than a moderately good lifestyle with systemic unemployment problems and slow growth.
Here's an article on much hated France's health care system.
And you can look up any statistics you like...life expectancy, access to health care, education (though how you define quality is tricky), purchasing power...Where they totally lose is in your chance of being a billionaire. Not bloody likely. But it never really was, was it?
Please explain that to me. How does an entity go bankrupt when it issues the currency in which if owes its debt?
Here's an interesting endeavor. You know those SS and Medicare trust funds that are going to run out of cash? Can you tell me where all that cash is being held? If you can't find it, don't you think it a little strange to talk about running out of something that doesn't actually exist? Sort of like believing the federal govt can go bankrupt or in magic ponies that poop gold nuggets, no?
Edited by salsabob, 28 June 2012 - 09:10 PM.
