> Europe is falling so far behind USA

In which ways, exactly?

Healthcare in European countries is leagues above American healthcare for ordinary people, and so is social support system. In US, if you run out of money, you're simply left to starve or die of disease.

Here is Eastern Europe we are thankful for private healthcare every day - the state-run socialised healthcare literally kills. Recently there was a case of a senior citizen left without a simple oxygen tank until he was braindead - just because the state employees did not give a crap.

Hospitals look like in the First World War movies. Every little thing (like toilet paper or soap in the communal bathroom) is missing. You have to buy your own medicine and bring consumables with you... I could go on.

What do you mean about staving and dying of disease in the USA? Who are food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid programs for then?

As a follow European, having lived in several countries east-to-central-to-west, I concur.

Where did this myth that European healthcare is some sort of panacea originate?

Maybe from far away, if you squint really hard, through ideology-tinted lenses?

Or some viral study referring to 1990s Sweden?

You want to avoid the public healthcare system like the plague. GPs, dentists, specialists, palliative care… always look for the "private" option first. I scare-quote "private" because the industry is heavily regulated so that even private care must be half-public, in order to operate legally.

The resulting public system is depersonalized, bureaucratic, uncaring, underfunded (inevitable corruption and inefficiency of mind-boggling proportions rather than lack of funds as such). The system survives through heroic efforts of overworked & abused "public" doctors and nurses.

In my home EU country (CZ) the medical staff are either revolting [0] or resolving to good old bribery to restore the market conditions [1].

And CZ is just middle of the pack: most European countries have it worse, according to the Euro Health Consumer Index [2].

[0] https://www-seznamzpravy-cz.translate.goog/clanek/domaci-ziv...

[1] https://www-seznamzpravy-cz.translate.goog/clanek/domaci-ziv...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_Health_Consumer_Index

Thanks for providing your perspective! It’s incredibly frustrating to keep reading from people whose hospitals look like 5* hotels coupled with the Space Station praising a system they never used and have no idea how bad it can be.

Just because they perceive it as being free (although we are paying it through the nose in our monthly taxes) while theirs require a job and an insurance (which ours pretty much requires too).

> Hospitals look like in the First World War movies. Every little thing (like toilet paper or soap in the communal bathroom) is missing. You have to buy your own medicine and bring consumables with you... I could go on.

That's just bullcrap. I live in a fairly poor Eastern European country, and public hospitals work fine. The only problem is that you may have to wait up a week to get an appointment (because everyone is using public healthcare), but apart from that I've never had a problem with public healthcare in my life. They diagnoze you, they give you prescription (which you don't have to pay for), and you go home.

Maybe you resent that the buildings don't look like 5 star hotels, but all I care about is that place is clean and sanitized, and does the job.