All ways of funding health care must deliver pretty much the same outcome – for a given kind of population, available treatments, medical expertise, etc – regardless of whether funded by taxpayer or directly by the user.
The only way to do anything very different would obviously imply that
money is being generated from thin air, or
money is disappearing into thin air, or
the populations being treated are substantially different in their health (due to other factors), or
the health service is being subsidised by the general taxpayer
Within any given budget, there’s huge scope for different philosophies of healthcare provision to result in different outcomes.
Snoopy wrote:
compare scandinavian crime statistics vs USA.
That depends what you want to look at and compare.
Many scandic countries are effectively ethnostates and do not remotely have the diversity that the US has.
Sweeden has a real problem with bombs at the moment from what I’ve read.
In terms of medical research and drug development is the us not pretty much at the forefront? I was of the understanding that they have nearly the best 5 year cancer survival rates in the world.
Off_Field wrote:
Many scandic countries are effectively ethnostates and do not remotely have the diversity that the US has.
Many? 
Things are simple when only scratching the (tabloid) surface (there aren’t many “scandic” countries for one). In Norway alone we have at least 4 completely different languages, of which two are official languages. These languages belong to ethnic groups who have been here from a few hundred years to thousands of years. Some 50-100 years ago the state had large scale processes to make everyone speak Norwegian as the first language. It had some “success”, but inevitably ended as the inhumane disaster it was.
Today, try to order some food at a restaurant or hotel in any larger city or main tourist facility. You will be surprised perhaps that they all speak English very well. But, I guess you didn’t know that even I have to speak English to them, because they cannot speak Norwegian They are young people from eastern/southern Europe mostly.
Granted, the US is a country of large diversity, but that is definitely not the cause of all the crime there. Besides, most of the crime is concentrated in very specific locations.
LeSving wrote:
Granted, the US is a country of large diversity, but that is definitely not the cause of all the crime there. Besides, most of the crime is concentrated in very specific locations.
Nature tends to equalize.
A society that’s very unequal means problems. “Social freedom” is a nice thing. It would however mean a lot less “private security guard” jobs at gated communities (inverse prisons).
Re “all the crime” in the US. Overall property crime in the US is lower than for example the UK, Italy, New Zealand etc and perhaps more significantly crime in the US is concentrated in small geographic areas that mostly happen to be as far from my home as Moscow to Munich (or further) I generally feel more comfortable avoiding crime in the US than elsewhere. Some of that comes of course from familiarity, but equally there is nowhere in Europe (with which I am also quite familiar) where I would leave my keys in a motorcycle when parked in public as I often do in the US.
So maybe a lot of it is just indoctrinated via media/pop culture (hollywood, netflix crime series)?
Many people who’ve never been to the usa have this picture that you’re easily going to get shot there.
I’ve never seen a gun there unless :)
I once heard a gun discharged in public in the US. This was in about 1988. One time in 45 years.
Off_Field wrote:
Sweeden has a real problem with bombs at the moment from what I’ve read.
Sweden has a problem with conflicts between and within criminal gangs, mainly shootings, but also some cases of bombings. This particular kind of criminality has risen sharply during the last few years, but it affects mostly gang members and their families and is also geographically limited.
If you exclude gang criminality, violent crime rates in Sweden have been dropping steadily since the 1970s.
“I’m not quite sure how you say that the living standard for the vast majority of americans is not decent, that means you think 200+ million people have a poor standard of living? If so why do so many people want to get into the country? Lower fuel prices, and cheaper goods also help increase standard of living for similar income”
For some reason quotation is not working on my phone but regardless if I thought I’d respond to this with some data. The reason people immigrate to US is firstly that the buying power of the US population of 327 million people is, on the average, higher than every other country in the world except Switzerland, and roughly 20% higher than for example the average German in the average German job. The second factor is that skilled people immigrating from similarly developed countries have more personal financial opportunity by virtue of less wealth redistribution. This translates to an unexceptional but motivated and skilled immigrant such as myself or others in my family reasonably expecting to double their buying power, or more, over time. This then allows personal investment which given a few decades of work provides financial independence from investment income and a tangible, personally controlled legacy for their family (whether in the US or not) that will outlive themselves. They do not become pensioners, personally degraded by reliance on government benefits. The latter point is particularly important to me.
Unskilled Mexican immigrants to the US also BTW double their buying power relative to Mexico, but at a lower level, by virtue of crossing the border. But no, they do not live anything like a engineer or doctor unless they are one, and neither they nor anybody else thinks they should. They do OTOH send a great deal of money home.
LeSving wrote:
. In Norway alone we have at least 4 completely different languages, of which two are official languages. These languages belong to ethnic groups who have been here from a few hundred years to thousands of years. Some 50-100 years ago the state had large scale processes to make everyone speak Norwegian as the first language. It had some “success”, but inevitably ended as the inhumane disaster it was.
Factbook puts norway at 83.2% Norwegian (including about 60’000 Sami), other European 8.3% and other 8.5%. They’re not going to be winning any diversity awards 
Compare to the US at 72.4% White, black 12.6% Asian 4.8%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.9%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, other 6.2%, two or more races 2.9% .
That’s a massive difference in make up of the population of the country, and for good and bad that will lead to differences.
Religion in norway is supposedly 71.5% church of Norway, 2.8% RC 3.9% another denomination of Christianity, 2% a different religion, 2.9% muslim and 16.8% no religious affiliation.
Trying to pick out specific regional variations sort of misses big picture.
I understand that the Sweedish gang bombing problem stems mainly from poor immigrant areas. Still it’s something I’ve found interesting to read about. For all that it’s lauded, when it comes to bombings, no other developed country not at war comes remotely close.
