UK, Italy, France quality decline, now poorer than all 50 states

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UK NHS is great for routine MD visits and for A&E. However, it has long queues (over a year is not so unusual) for a good sized list of medical procedures.

I likely would be dead if my heart issue had arisen while under NHS care -- and UK colleagues all agree -- because of a long queue (12+ months at that time) to get the needed heart procedure. By contrast, in the US I was able to get the needed heart MRI and other needed tests completed in a few weeks, then get the needed heart procedure completed within 2 months of the original incident. Waiting 12+ months for that procedure, my likely outcome was death.

What some UK colleagues do to work around the long queues when needed is to go private (outside NHS) -- curiously often with identical hospitals and providers. They have to pay through the nose when they do this. Medical debt is an issue there as well as here being one result.

NHS can be great but often not for non-urgent or non-critical care. I think it’s good to have those who can afford it taking out private insurance or paying privately. It relieves some of the pressure on the public system. That is kind of the Australian model.

I had both of my children under the NHS. It was great and I didn’t pay a cent. When my daughter was diagnosed with a kidney issue, she was immediately referred to a specialist at Evelina Hospital, probably the best pediatric hospital in the UK. When my son developed an egg allergy, he was immediately referred to Dr Adam Fox, one of the best pediatric allergists. This was about 15 years ago. But if you need a knee replacement, I imagine you could be waiting for years.

But you could also pay oop for the knee surgery which is cheaper than the US. Or go to places like Thailand or Korea to get quality medical care.

At least you haven't been paying tens of thousands of dollars for basic catastrophic insurance like we have here, and then the crap insurance company could also deny the knee surgery. Then you have to spend many many hours on the phone with your insurance company fighting it.

I don't pay tens of thousands for health insurance. You're clearly not working, I'm guessing? So it's a decision you made when you left the workforce. I do agree that it's not ideal that health insurance is so dependent on jobs but that's what most Americans do and it does work out for most people. American healthcare is ridiculously expensive because it is also overly generous and risk averse (making it even more generous than it really needs to be, which is why bills mount up so rapidly). We can complain about the system (and every country complains about their system) but we do have to work with what we have and you made certain decisions that put you in this particular place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The taxation has killed the economies. Too many socialist at the voting booths. The same trend the US in on.

We’re not the ones lighting money on fire with needless wars and ballrooms.

A 400M private funded ballroom does not move the needle.

entitlements take up 3.5 TRILLION of the budget. That is mandatory spending and is 50% of all spending. you would need to build 8,750 ballrooms to reach that level of spending..

The iran war is truly inexcusable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to watch that stupid YouTube video — can someone summarize?

A guy doing man in the street interviews in London. One American, the rest British. All expressing surprise as most thought the UK would be in the top ten if it were a state. One women guessed the bottom 25% and said Americans like working more than the British.

The average European is fed anti-American news stories nonstop. Even if it is better here, they will never come to that conclusion.

I had six month maternity leave but European friends don’t believe me. It simply isn’t possible. Same with me going on a long vacation.

I told them my salary (around $300k) when they weirdly asked me, and their response was that healthcare is surely making up the difference. As if a healthy 40 year old woman pays $150k per year in healthcare. They had never even known someone making that much money and these are people with advanced degrees.

Fantastic! So glad to hear lots of American workers now get six months maternity leave.

Only Feds and some professionals. Try being a waitress or some blue collar industry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I travel around Europe, the biggest safety issue I have to worry about is pickpockets. When I travel in the US, or just live here, the biggest safety issue I have to worry about is shootings.

I'll take pickpockets over shootings.

You seriously worry about shootings when you go around your life in the USA? Even in our major cities like NYC, you are more likely to be shoved into the tracks of a subway or stabbed by a crazy person in Manhattan than getting shot in the Bronx.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UK NHS is great for routine MD visits and for A&E. However, it has long queues (over a year is not so unusual) for a good sized list of medical procedures.

I likely would be dead if my heart issue had arisen while under NHS care -- and UK colleagues all agree -- because of a long queue (12+ months at that time) to get the needed heart procedure. By contrast, in the US I was able to get the needed heart MRI and other needed tests completed in a few weeks, then get the needed heart procedure completed within 2 months of the original incident. Waiting 12+ months for that procedure, my likely outcome was death.

What some UK colleagues do to work around the long queues when needed is to go private (outside NHS) -- curiously often with identical hospitals and providers. They have to pay through the nose when they do this. Medical debt is an issue there as well as here being one result.

NHS can be great but often not for non-urgent or non-critical care. I think it’s good to have those who can afford it taking out private insurance or paying privately. It relieves some of the pressure on the public system. That is kind of the Australian model.

I had both of my children under the NHS. It was great and I didn’t pay a cent. When my daughter was diagnosed with a kidney issue, she was immediately referred to a specialist at Evelina Hospital, probably the best pediatric hospital in the UK. When my son developed an egg allergy, he was immediately referred to Dr Adam Fox, one of the best pediatric allergists. This was about 15 years ago. But if you need a knee replacement, I imagine you could be waiting for years.

But you could also pay oop for the knee surgery which is cheaper than the US. Or go to places like Thailand or Korea to get quality medical care.

At least you haven't been paying tens of thousands of dollars for basic catastrophic insurance like we have here, and then the crap insurance company could also deny the knee surgery. Then you have to spend many many hours on the phone with your insurance company fighting it.

I don't pay tens of thousands for health insurance. You're clearly not working, I'm guessing? So it's a decision you made when you left the workforce. I do agree that it's not ideal that health insurance is so dependent on jobs but that's what most Americans do and it does work out for most people. American healthcare is ridiculously expensive because it is also overly generous and risk averse (making it even more generous than it really needs to be, which is why bills mount up so rapidly). We can complain about the system (and every country complains about their system) but we do have to work with what we have and you made certain decisions that put you in this particular place.

This is literally indentured servitude to have to work Full Time for a big enough company forced to provide decent healthcare plans till 65 just to afford healthcare. a lot of people who could retire earlier or want to scale down to part time work are forced to either keep grinding for healthcare coverage or quit and be poor to apply for various subsidies. Guess which one is a more popular option? And this keep driving costs for everyone too. This system of employer sponsored insurance is a death trap that will eventually compound the issue so much that the entire system will collapse anyway.

[Anonymous]

I don't think you know what indentured servitude is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d rather live in any of those places than here. The universal healthcare alone would be a relief.

Exactly.

a relief from what, available heatlhcare and quality? Yes it may be expensive but remember we make like twice the amount of europe and its doesn't cost as much comapred to the taxes on income.

? The amount we pay in premiums + deductible is about $20K for a family of 3 in the US.

I guess we need to make more to pay for the outrageous healthcare and college costs.

Our UMC friends in the UK don't have to worry about paying for health care costs or college that much. Sure, we may have more than them, but we worry more about paying for medical care. They are able to retire early and not worry about health insurance. We are forced to work longer just for the health insurance.

We're seriously thinking of living there for a few years before I qualify for medicare (spouse is a dual citizen). ACA premiums for a 60 yr old hdp is about $1000/month.

We did a cost comparison with our friends in the UK, and we pay a lot more than they do overall.

Our UK tax bracket would be 20%. There is no joint filing in the UK.

So, if each of us have an income of $65k (ish), we each get taxed 20% (13K). That tax amount (13k) ends up being lower than the expected healthcare costs of a 60 yr old person in the US.

So, yes, the UK is cheaper when you factor in how expensive healthcare is in the US.

I work for a f500 and do not pay anywhere close to 20k a year for healthcare. The numbers you're quoting is more for self employed people buying their own insurance. I did Google this and it seems like the average family of 4 pays between 6-7k and year with the employer covering the rest.

The average UK student graduates from university with a higher debt than the average American graduate. Google says it's 53,000 pounds, or $71k. The average college debt in the US is $43k. And starting salaries for college grads in the US is a lot higher.

So be careful when cherry picking your examples.

Americans have to work until 65 so they don't have to pay $20K/year on healthcare.

Also, not all employers in the US pay for health insurance. As a matter of fact, about 15% to 20% of the population had zero health insurance before ACA. These were not all self employed people. And now, of course, thanks to Rs, many have lost their ACA insurance.

Americans have less college debt in part because we the taxpayers bail them out, and some of the colleges here are rich. But, it's not about debt. It's about how much we are paying for college here compared to the UK.

I recall a French person on this forum saying that they like how they can make more money here, and their private insurance here is great, but if they lost their job due to illness they'd probably move back to France. The majority of bankruptcies in the US are due to medical reasons. That's unheard of in Europe.

America is a great place to make money, not have a quality of life. We have less leave, vacation, more pesticides in our food, more big corp money involved in our everyday of life - food, politics, etc.. It's insidious.

Glass is half full or half empty, eh?

Average age of retirement in UK is 65, same with Germany. So seems like a moot point.

I lived in the UK for years and in an UMC world. You're spinning a scenario that isn't typical. What I saw was people working long hours, with long commutes, with pleasant but not extravagant lives, and constant money worries especially affording good housing and school fees for children. Most also had some kind of private insurance access.

Contrary to what another poster idealized on here, administrators or national health care systems aren't focused on the best possible care but stretching out a reasonable standard of care among a bigger and bigger population (FYI health care expenditures are also soaring in UK, funding the NHS and where the money actually goes is a perennial political football topic, complaints about a bloated bureaucracy, controlling costs and unaccountability are widespread).

I am sure we can all agree Denmark and similar countries are winners, but they are also small, highly homogenous, wealthy, in other words, they have it easier.

Add tiny, badly insulated homes. Although I get many people on here dream of cramming a family of four into a small house in Europe and driving an overpriced hatchback.

The ability to own a large, comfortable home and drive large, comfortable cars is something many liberals detest, but unfortunately really does make a huge difference in your QOL.

The tiny house/flat and daily grocery runs are romanticized on the internet.

Instead I see my friends barely scraping by to pay for a very small and unimpressive home and going to BS jobs that pay 50% the salary they would here. They just shop frequently because they don’t have room in their tiny house and fridge. Then taking multiple kids on public transport in the rain. Yes living the dream. Thank god they aren’t living in a McMansion in Dallas.

This is actually an excellent lifestyle if you’re not an obese, lazy, wasteful $hit. Sorry it wouldn’t work for you.

Well I’m none of those things and try to bike whenever possible. But I absolutely love my large, nice home and new, safe cars. I try to look for the positive in things and as an American I greatly appreciate having so much space, land and the ability to live in such a nice home.

That’s great for you but do you understand not everyone wants a large home? I moved from a small house in a bustling vibrant part of London to a house which was twice the size in Bethesda. I was happier in London. I found even the inner suburbs of Bethesda quiet, boring and a bit lonely. Not everyone thrives on the same things. It feels like lots of posters here are insisting everyone values the same things when that’s obviously not the case.

You sound like you have money to find a comfortable place wherever you are. A house in a bustling part of London to a house in Bethesda? What about the median income person in these countries? What about their kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to watch that stupid YouTube video — can someone summarize?

A guy doing man in the street interviews in London. One American, the rest British. All expressing surprise as most thought the UK would be in the top ten if it were a state. One women guessed the bottom 25% and said Americans like working more than the British.

The average European is fed anti-American news stories nonstop. Even if it is better here, they will never come to that conclusion.

I had six month maternity leave but European friends don’t believe me. It simply isn’t possible. Same with me going on a long vacation.

I told them my salary (around $300k) when they weirdly asked me, and their response was that healthcare is surely making up the difference. As if a healthy 40 year old woman pays $150k per year in healthcare. They had never even known someone making that much money and these are people with advanced degrees.

Fantastic! So glad to hear lots of American workers now get six months maternity leave.

Only Feds and some professionals. Try being a waitress or some blue collar industry.

Please let us be clear: Civil Service do NOT get 6 months paid maternity leave.

In some circumstances, and only with prior written approval of supervisors, they can take 6 months of “Leave without Pay” (meaning no benefits during the LWOP either). The only real benefit of LWOP is that the job is kept for them — provided they return to work no later than the (specified up front in writing) scheduled day to resume work. A much more typical case would be taking 3-4 months of LWOP maternity leave, which most non-governmental exempt jobs also will allow. (I know of one case where a civil service employee took a full year of LWOP, mainly because their management was very happy for them to be off the payroll.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow
This is good but it's gotten even worse. Everyone thinks Europe is amazing hasn't moved there, wait until they have to start funding their own defense and then then all their social programs may get cut

You can also Google that Spain and Portugal are even lower. Whenever I travel to Europe i feel like its lower class in terms of expectations of pickpockets, no AC and just dirty and people not working

[img]https://www.voronoiapp.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.voronoiapp.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbde530b-b9af-4683-b105-fc4a9eb3681f.webp&w=1080&q=85
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From this, I am hearing that the wars men start are costly, and we would all live better without criminal white men trying to avoid jail.

You have missed the real problem in your propaganda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The taxation has killed the economies. Too many socialist at the voting booths. The same trend the US in on.

We’re not the ones lighting money on fire with needless wars and ballrooms.

+1

Dementia Man sucking up and stealing all our money with no improvement to our lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The taxation has killed the economies. Too many socialist at the voting booths. The same trend the US in on.

We’re not the ones lighting money on fire with needless wars and ballrooms.

+1

Dementia Man sucking up and stealing all our money with no improvement to our lives.

Well, they're the ones paying billions to give free housing and benefits to illegal migrants and look the other way around and bury official reports when migrants rape women or attack people. The US has never experienced anything like the grooming gang scandals in the UK.

I love Europe but they have many problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UK NHS is great for routine MD visits and for A&E. However, it has long queues (over a year is not so unusual) for a good sized list of medical procedures.

I likely would be dead if my heart issue had arisen while under NHS care -- and UK colleagues all agree -- because of a long queue (12+ months at that time) to get the needed heart procedure. By contrast, in the US I was able to get the needed heart MRI and other needed tests completed in a few weeks, then get the needed heart procedure completed within 2 months of the original incident. Waiting 12+ months for that procedure, my likely outcome was death.

What some UK colleagues do to work around the long queues when needed is to go private (outside NHS) -- curiously often with identical hospitals and providers. They have to pay through the nose when they do this. Medical debt is an issue there as well as here being one result.

NHS can be great but often not for non-urgent or non-critical care. I think it’s good to have those who can afford it taking out private insurance or paying privately. It relieves some of the pressure on the public system. That is kind of the Australian model.

I had both of my children under the NHS. It was great and I didn’t pay a cent. When my daughter was diagnosed with a kidney issue, she was immediately referred to a specialist at Evelina Hospital, probably the best pediatric hospital in the UK. When my son developed an egg allergy, he was immediately referred to Dr Adam Fox, one of the best pediatric allergists. This was about 15 years ago. But if you need a knee replacement, I imagine you could be waiting for years.

But you could also pay oop for the knee surgery which is cheaper than the US. Or go to places like Thailand or Korea to get quality medical care.

At least you haven't been paying tens of thousands of dollars for basic catastrophic insurance like we have here, and then the crap insurance company could also deny the knee surgery. Then you have to spend many many hours on the phone with your insurance company fighting it.

I don't pay tens of thousands for health insurance. You're clearly not working, I'm guessing? So it's a decision you made when you left the workforce. I do agree that it's not ideal that health insurance is so dependent on jobs but that's what most Americans do and it does work out for most people. American healthcare is ridiculously expensive because it is also overly generous and risk averse (making it even more generous than it really needs to be, which is why bills mount up so rapidly). We can complain about the system (and every country complains about their system) but we do have to work with what we have and you made certain decisions that put you in this particular place.

This is literally indentured servitude to have to work Full Time for a big enough company forced to provide decent healthcare plans till 65 just to afford healthcare. a lot of people who could retire earlier or want to scale down to part time work are forced to either keep grinding for healthcare coverage or quit and be poor to apply for various subsidies. Guess which one is a more popular option? And this keep driving costs for everyone too. This system of employer sponsored insurance is a death trap that will eventually compound the issue so much that the entire system will collapse anyway.

The average retirement ages in western Europe is comparable to the US so it seems like a moot point in the general scheme of things. Though I'd love for healthcare in the US not be job-specific. But pragmatically, I don't see a good alternative. T

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to watch that stupid YouTube video — can someone summarize?

A guy doing man in the street interviews in London. One American, the rest British. All expressing surprise as most thought the UK would be in the top ten if it were a state. One women guessed the bottom 25% and said Americans like working more than the British.

The average European is fed anti-American news stories nonstop. Even if it is better here, they will never come to that conclusion.

I had six month maternity leave but European friends don’t believe me. It simply isn’t possible. Same with me going on a long vacation.

I told them my salary (around $300k) when they weirdly asked me, and their response was that healthcare is surely making up the difference. As if a healthy 40 year old woman pays $150k per year in healthcare. They had never even known someone making that much money and these are people with advanced degrees.

Fantastic! So glad to hear lots of American workers now get six months maternity leave.

Only Feds and some professionals. Try being a waitress or some blue collar industry.

Please let us be clear: Civil Service do NOT get 6 months paid maternity leave.

In some circumstances, and only with prior written approval of supervisors, they can take 6 months of “Leave without Pay” (meaning no benefits during the LWOP either). The only real benefit of LWOP is that the job is kept for them — provided they return to work no later than the (specified up front in writing) scheduled day to resume work. A much more typical case would be taking 3-4 months of LWOP maternity leave, which most non-governmental exempt jobs also will allow. (I know of one case where a civil service employee took a full year of LWOP, mainly because their management was very happy for them to be off the payroll.)

To be clear, there is now 12 weeks of paid parental leave for Feds.

Prior to that Feds could use sick leave, paid annual leave, and LWOP. I had very long paid maternity leaves a long time ago, but I worked at a small, flexible agency. I would have loved the 12 weeks they have now and combining it with my annual leave that I hoarded to cover my maternity leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UK NHS is great for routine MD visits and for A&E. However, it has long queues (over a year is not so unusual) for a good sized list of medical procedures.

I likely would be dead if my heart issue had arisen while under NHS care -- and UK colleagues all agree -- because of a long queue (12+ months at that time) to get the needed heart procedure. By contrast, in the US I was able to get the needed heart MRI and other needed tests completed in a few weeks, then get the needed heart procedure completed within 2 months of the original incident. Waiting 12+ months for that procedure, my likely outcome was death.

What some UK colleagues do to work around the long queues when needed is to go private (outside NHS) -- curiously often with identical hospitals and providers. They have to pay through the nose when they do this. Medical debt is an issue there as well as here being one result.

NHS can be great but often not for non-urgent or non-critical care. I think it’s good to have those who can afford it taking out private insurance or paying privately. It relieves some of the pressure on the public system. That is kind of the Australian model.

I had both of my children under the NHS. It was great and I didn’t pay a cent. When my daughter was diagnosed with a kidney issue, she was immediately referred to a specialist at Evelina Hospital, probably the best pediatric hospital in the UK. When my son developed an egg allergy, he was immediately referred to Dr Adam Fox, one of the best pediatric allergists. This was about 15 years ago. But if you need a knee replacement, I imagine you could be waiting for years.

But you could also pay oop for the knee surgery which is cheaper than the US. Or go to places like Thailand or Korea to get quality medical care.

At least you haven't been paying tens of thousands of dollars for basic catastrophic insurance like we have here, and then the crap insurance company could also deny the knee surgery. Then you have to spend many many hours on the phone with your insurance company fighting it.

I don't pay tens of thousands for health insurance. You're clearly not working, I'm guessing? So it's a decision you made when you left the workforce. I do agree that it's not ideal that health insurance is so dependent on jobs but that's what most Americans do and it does work out for most people. American healthcare is ridiculously expensive because it is also overly generous and risk averse (making it even more generous than it really needs to be, which is why bills mount up so rapidly). We can complain about the system (and every country complains about their system) but we do have to work with what we have and you made certain decisions that put you in this particular place.

You clearly don't understand health insurance in this country.

yes, I work. But, I guess you didn't know that many companies don't offer health insurance to their employees, especially gig workers, which there are millions of.

And let's not forget ageism where many older people get pushed out of the workplace. I'm guessing you are not older than 50 or you're a lawyer or something, so you live in a bubble.

[Anonymous]

We just returned from 4 weeks in the UK and France.

The lack of dental care in the UK was shocking. I've lived in very poor parts of the US but never seen the poor dental care that I saw in the UK.
I saw so many people missing teeth in their mid thirties or low forties that it was shocking

In the US we have inexpensive dentures. Americans will work a second job if they have to to fund their dentures.

The cafes in Paris were shocking. Parisians live in such small units that they go out to cafes but you literally sit shoulder to shoulder in the cafes.

It was tough to find a native born Londoner in London.

Cork was depressing. It felt like the entire city needed to be pressure washed and painted. There was peeling pain everywhere and the city was dirty.