I think the problem with comparing the United States with other countries in general- specifically Sweden/Norway or even the UK or Canada is that the United States is just so much bigger. So, the characteristics of the "average" person are hardly representative (obviously). It's hard to imagine that this site can adequately compare life in two places. A better comparison may be single metropolitan area or state. I.e I think it would be more relevant to compare NYC with London, or Massachusetts with Sweden.
To the credit of the website though, it is cleanly designed and pretty interesting to play with. Cool.
Definitely be interesting, but I think many of the figures would remain the same. The lack of state provided health care exists whether you look at the US or only NY.
It'd be nice to get some user contributed/voted on facts as well on the website... for example (some of my own):
US: You can't buy good cheese or chocolate
GB: You can't buy good milkshakes or burgers
True about NY, but not about Massachusetts actually. If you go to page 3 of (1), you see that people under 300% of poverty level are provided care through "Commonwealth Care." This actually adds to my point, because of the US's federal system, different states, regions, and cities have not only different demographics, but different laws as well.
I like the idea of adding the "what is good where" point as well. For example, they don't discuss things like access to beach, or frequency of bone chilling blizzards.
Freshness counts for a lot. I've seen that happen with chocolate that has melted and then re-solidified in the package. It's kind of powdery and dry, and it doesn't taste right. Visiting the amusement park & chocolate factory in Hershey, PA is probably the only time I was impressed by Hershey's chocolate. Some of it was still warm :-)
I went to a lecture by a chemist working in chocolate production (this was about 14 years ago though) - they said that Hershey taste and hence the American chocolate taste was down to off milk.
When chocolate factories were set up the milk couldn't be kept cool in transport and so went off before it could be used in the chocolate. They remedied this when the process had been improved but people wanted the traditional flavour and so they went back to off-milk flavoured chocolate.
It was a great lecture they handed out pouches with about 14 different samples including chocolate at different stages of production and, the quite frankly disgusting, original style of Hershey chocolate.
There is no "lack of state provided health care" in the US.
Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)
Of course, better treatment costs money, but that's true everywhere.
Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)
This is simply incorrect. Hospitals are only obliged to treat emergencies. They will not treat anything else if they think you cannot pay them.
"Study Links Medical Costs and Personal Bankruptcy: Harvard researchers say 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems -- and 78% of those filers had medical insurance."
I figured you would cite Warren. The media bought her "study" hook line and sinker, and there isn't much else to support this claim. (Seriously, if you don't believe me, try to find any replication of it.)
Her study is deeply flawed. The biggest problem is that it doesn't address causality or even correlation - for all we know, 62% of statistically similar people who did not go bankrupt also had a "major medical cause" of their non-bankruptcy. She doesn't address this at all.
Thanks for the links. I didn't realize Warren's affiliation with PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) or her study's loose definition of "medical bankruptcy" (e.g. people who filed for bankruptcy who paid more than $5000 out-of-pocket or lost two or more weeks of work for medical reasons, even if they did not claim "medical reasons" for their bankruptcy filing).
I don't have a study, but I have myself. Ancedotes don't equal statistics but I can see how it happens.
For me:
As of January 1, 2011. Happy, healthy, planning a couple ski trips.
As of January 18, 2011. Happy, healthy. $3,000 in medical debt.
It wasn't a really hard road to get from 0 to $3,000 in 3 weeks either. I currently work for one of the top 20 largest companies in the US. I have a United Healthcare PPO (the largest carrier in the country) and Delta Dental (also the largest dental carrier). So I don't work for some fly by night startup with an off brand insurance, this is blue-chip benefits at the most stable kind of job you can have.
I had previously scheduled my wisdom teeth to be removed, had them removed no problem. They paid 80%, I paid 20% plus the deductible. Total cost to me was $450 out of pocket. No big deal and expected.
Not a week later, couldn't breath, thought it was either an asthma attack or allergic reaction to something I just ate at a restaurent. Go to the hospital, its not either. After a cat-scan, x-ray, a couple hours with a GI and another doc I find out it is something completely different and previously unknown. Controllable, not a big deal, but the symptoms were quite scary.
Get the bill, $2,100. My insurance declines $1,900 worth of charges since it was an "illness" and they don't cover that in the ER unless you must stay overnight because they don't want people using the ER as their primary care physician (understandable). So apply my $500 deductible, and I'm on the hook for basically the whole thing. Call it $2,000. (this is pending appeal). Mind you, if they approved it they would have paid 90% and I would have paid my $500 deductible, so I should have sandbagged it and stayed overnight apparently (while running up twice the bill).
C) Had to get some additional dental surgery. After the last experience expected to pay 20%, but for whatever reason they only cover 50% (since it was damage to my gums from retainers as a child, which apparently is not their problem) and I'm on the hook for an additional $925.
Now, writing checks for $3,000 won't bankrupt me by any stretch. (mind you, I'm actually writing more like $4,000 but a bunch of it is fair and expected, the $3,000 is the amount above and beyond what I think I'm supposed to be paying). But it would for a lot of people. Even for me it sucks, I had planned to use that money for something more interesting than papering over the holes in my insurance policy.
I can completely understand how people end up in bankruptcy. In my opinion, if the plan says it will cover 80% and I have to cover 20%, with a deductible and a maximum out of pocket expense for me annually, then thats what should happen for non fraudulent charges. I went to the hospital for a good reason. All of the dental work has been recommended to me by a general dentist, seconded by an periodontist, and concurred by the oral surgeon who actually did it. None of this stuff is me running up unncessary bills. So I have the max out of pocket put aside in an account every year, and all of sudden my bills blow that by 4x because they are declining charges, and I'm sucking money out of my general emergency account, it sucks.
I can handle it, I'm glad I planned for emergencies and saved money and live within my means, but I can understand how this doesn't work for people living paycheck to paycheck and its not their fault. Not long ago I was getting by with the max out of pocket in an account, no emergency fund, and saying if shit happened I'd put it on my credit card while I pumped all my spare cash into paying down student loans. So I'm just lucky this is all happening Jan of 2011 and not Jan of 2010. And anytime you can make a statement like that, it is hard to blame the people where the dates didn't work out for them.
You "forget" that the folks who actually can't afford $3k are also the folks who get subsidized care AND who are bankruptcy proof.
> Even for me it sucks, I had planned to use that money for something more interesting than papering over the holes in my insurance policy.
The "holes" in your insurance policy were your choice, a choice that saved you money on that policy. If you'd made a different choice, that money wouldn't be in your pocket to spend on "something more interesting".
There is no free lunch. Health care costs money. Having the US govt pay for it doesn't make it cheaper.
I know that many of you think that govt healthcare in other countries works well. Do you really think that the US govt is likely to do as well?
It's true that medicare doesn't spend much money cutting a check, but the total expenses are another story. (The low-ball estimate of medicare fraud is an order of magnitude higher than the profit of health insurance companies.)
Oh, and you're more likely to win a dispute with a for-profit provider than you are with a US govt service.
I was responding to the statement "many of you think".
Whether that's reproducible in the US is an open question. But the fact that US citizens accept third-world level healthcare is baffling to me.
ps: I have first-hand experience with European healthcare, US healthcare and third world healthcare. I'd pick European first, third world second (depending on the country though) and US third, if I had to choose.
> But the fact that US citizens accept third-world level healthcare is baffling to me.
US healthcare, even the free stuff, is well above third-world level. The typical is very comparable.
Yes, the US life-expectancy stats aren't fantastic, but healthcare isn't the only variable. (Look at the disease cure rates - we do very well on cancer for example.)
Only one problem - your anecdote provides (very weak) evidence against Warren's conclusions.
You had a major medical cause but you didn't go bankrupt. Lots of people do. To properly estimate the number of medical bankruptcies, you need to do the following calculation:
# Medical bankruptcies = # of bankruptcies x [P(bankruptcy | medical cause) - P(bankruptcy | no medical cause)] x P(medical cause)
All Warren measured was P(medical cause | bankruptcy). Then she led a bunch of innumerate reporters to believe that P(medical cause | bankruptcy) x # of bankruptcies = # of medical bankruptcies.
Your anecdote cuts against Warren's conclusions [1] because it suggests we increase our estimate of P(no bankruptcy | medical cause) and thereby reduce our estimate of P(bankruptcy | medical cause).
[1] I'm not suggesting a single anecdote proves much of anything. I'm just pointing out the direction it's infinitesimal value points.
I hate to reduce this to numbers, especially GDP per capita which is even more of a joke, but in any sensible form of measurement, Sweden has been richer than the US for a long time.
Wow, thanks, I didn't know that Sweden had passed the US (edit: it hasn't see link below). This must have happened the last 4-5 years.
Still, the links in my previous post are about purchasing power, not GDP/capita. But you're right, they are at least much closer now.
Actually, this is pretty good news for the US, because Sweden was in a terrible mess in the mid 90s but managed to clean things up in a relatively short time (less than a decade). Of course, the US economy is much, much larger, but it's worth noting that things can get better rapidly once you're on the right track again.
No. Sweden ranks above the U.S. on 2 of the 3 lists on this page, and as it explains, a more sensible list would be based on PPP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...
Here, Sweden is above the U.S. on 0 out of 3 lists. Perhaps an even better list is PPP per hour worked
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...
Sweden is below the U.S. on 1 of 1 lists.
Perhaps an even more sensible list would be one showing U.S. States individually, since EU nations are generally comparable in size and population to individual States.
As of 2009, only Luxembourg and the UAE exceeded Connecticut in PPP GDP/capita (only the former exceeded the District of Columbia). Luxembourg is a tax haven, and the UAE is an oil nation.
Sweden ranks above the US on the most current list on that page. The other two lists are older data.
Also, size and population don't figure in to the comparison. You have to divide by population or the result is that the richest countries are countries like China and India, and the poorest are countries like Monaco and Luxembourg. And that's silly. If you can choose portions of countries, such as a state, it's too hard not to cherry-pick.
PPP seems like a good idea. It was devised to reflect that ten dollar buys a giant meal in Kiev but barely a BigMac in Zurich. But once you research it you'll find PPP seems specifically formulated to make Americans feel better about themselves. The basket of goods used to compose PPP is so American-centric that instead of de-skewing the results, it skews them further. The result is a joke.
But to be fair, it's easy to agree to disagree on this. Which country is richer is impossible to quantify in a meaningful way because it has to take into account quality of life, and being qualitative, will change per person.
>once you research it you'll find PPP seems specifically formulated to make Americans feel better about themselves
Oh?
>Which country is richer is impossible to quantify in a meaningful way because it has to take into account quality of life, and being qualitative, will change per person.
I was responding to your post, in which you asserted that Sweden is richer.
To the credit of the website though, it is cleanly designed and pretty interesting to play with. Cool.