Eg. impressions of Germany is that it's a nice place and all but they insist on paperwork/formalisms too much (for example apartment rental process is ridiculous) and it doesn't seem to be very upwardly mobile (you get taxed a lot so it's hard to accumulate capital when starting from mid level income for eg.).

That's not true here in the UK. People do use private healthcare but they're in the minority and it's usually for expediency rather than quality. Many very rich people still get treatment on the NHS. It's very, very good.

I've never once even thought about money or insurance at all when receiving healthcare and I couldn't imagine thinking about costs when I'm already worried about my health. Americans are delusional if they think their system is better.

"Then I found out that this other country — which I thought had a healthcare system that was so superior to the U.S. — doesn't test for the tumour marker that saved my life, and doesn't cover this drug that is responsible for pushing my cancer into remission after traditional chemotherapy failed to do that."[1]

[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/a-tale-of-2-...

The difference is that we as a country are willing to pay more taxes so that every single person gets drug coverage, and it's reasonable to expect that this will happen in the near future, even for expensive cutting edge drugs.

I don't think that's true. You can get free/cheap schooling and health care is always there for you. I would agree it's easier to move upward than in the US where it seems one of the big secrets for success is to have wealthy parents. Coming from Germany and now living in the US I am also not sure if the taxation in the US is that much lower when you add all taxes together. And if you or your partner has any serious health issue it's very likely that this will cost way more than any taxes you pay less.

So it's not just free vs. pay, but also what exactly you're buying. Unfortunately the single public payer in Canada system is a sacred cow, much like the idea of "socialized medicine" in the US is a non-starter. Everyone just digs their heels in and holds to the extremes, so the idea of small experiments of change never gets much traction...

The magic is that everyone gets this healthcare. Not only those able to afford the premiums for a very good private plan. On the one hand this is straight socialism. On the other it prevents bankruptcy (and downward economic mobility) due to serious health issues and allows access to quality healthcare to students, entrepreneurs, those between jobs, etc.

I don't understand how someone in the US can consider themselves more "free" than in more socialist countries when they're deeply beholden to their employers for basics like medical care.

My impression is that this varies a lot by country. For example that might be true in Australia and Canada, but not France or Germany. There are many different ways to implement universal healthcare.

This is true, but this is not that bad. The basic social security indeed stop being a thing once you earn enough. But if you earn that much, your work will provide you with an insurance that start at 50€/month to 250€/month that will cover A LOT of what you would have to pay in a private care clinic. You will still have to pay for the surgeon (especially if he is well known), but not the full cost.

I’m really interested on how much of your salary can you save after paying not just taxes but kindergarten, health insurance, unemployment insurance, pension plan, 25-ish paid vacation days etc.

Living in Germany I manage to get around 45% of take home money after fixed costs and taxes, from this I manage to save around 35% and could probably push a little bit more if I wanted to have a more miserable life and didn’t travel that much on vacations.

Worse, all of the complexity has its own costs which are now just compounding the problem.

At this point any sane person should be saying that our private market approach to healthcare is an experiment that unfortunately failed, but the gravy train is too big and too fast to stop quickly. Nobody in Washington or even the state legislatures can get traction on a replacement without drawing the ire of extremely well funded political interests.

That is not an example of successful policy.

Nevermind that I was one of those poor children.

But yes, the "policy" is the problem. Not the big heads stealing money.

4% of the national budget goes to public universities, and IVA is half the taxes levied by the federal government. There are no doubts of who is the giving and who is the receiving in this case. IVA is collected 60% on the bottom 50% of the population meaning its slightly regressive.

The first thing you can do to help the poor is to stop giving money to the rich: you can lower IVA by 1% if public universities were self funded.

If people actually did the research they'd see that these policies are just good common sense for them, but too many of our voters are lied to by the media they consume, so I worry things will never change.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in most other contexts), those revolution level standards of living are tremendously lower than what your average citizen has now even though we complain about home ownership and health care we still have places to live and emergency rooms. I'm not saying I'm willing to accept this level of modern indentured servitude, I'm saying most are.

For awhile, we had a generally progressive labor movement in the states where average citizens demanded improvement and progress. It seems to have reached a sort of stagnant state of complacency at some point and began to decline with much of that culture and momentum dying off in the process (not being passed on to future generations). Now, people just shake their heads and accept things the way they are instead of fighting for improvement in their lives. How do you educate the general population and convince them to support movements to continue to increase US workers' standards of living? I don't know the answer to that question.

I see an additional problem with the sort of bifurcation trend we're seeing in the middle class where people seem to be shifting to either upper middle or lower middle. The upper middle are typically more educated and so hammered in the rat race trying to salvage what remains for themselves, they can't find the time to support everyone else's rights. The lower middle typically aren't as educated: college is absurdly expensive and cultural + economic trends lead many of our most talented away from teaching (where many should be). This leaves the lower middle to be more susceptible to adopting media manipulation/ideology trends that aren't in their interests. I have a very bright and good friend who recently retired who told me if he was my age, he'd seriously consider migrating out of the country but he's retired and has a family. I hate to say it but sometimes I feel a tendency to agree with his evaluation and that's sad in one of the wealthiest countries in the world that has been a beacon of democracy and growth for many years.

The universal care works against my usage in the case of Argentina, but I can still handle myself privately without hassles. The problem in the US is NOT that it lacks a public option.

So didn't solve it either.

Im contesting the idea that public healthcare is what 1) lowers cost 2) guarantees good care