> One of the basic benefits is always being able to return to the US. Being inside American borders is very much safer than being anywhere else if/when the next major global military issue arises.
It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
Meanwhile, those developed countries with functioning health care systems that you can return to whenever don’t bother with worldwide taxation.
The factors which shorten average lifespans for Americans by a few years relative to some other developed countries are almost entirely lifestyle issues. They aren't actually caused by geographic location or government problems.
I think that’s debatable. France for example goes to great lengths to preserve local food culture and the protection of locally produced heirloom foods.
The US government couldn’t care less. If everyone decided to eat only TV dinners and shelf stable snacks that would be A-OK, even desirable because that kind of thing leads to GDP growth. France would never allow it.
US governments are borderline contemptuous of tradition, and tend to court radical reinventions of basic needs. That leads to people getting hurt, but is great for the economy.
>If everyone decided to eat only TV dinners and shelf stable snacks that would be A-OK
>France would never allow it.
While I do not support eating unhealthy foods like that on a regular basis at all (I have some sort of instinctive repulsion towards that), I do support allowing adults to have the freedom to make their own choices regarding what they eat.
>It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
Does it actually?
I assume that disparity is more to do with the populations of impoverished people around this very diverse country that can't compare to smaller European countries that just don't have those populations.
There is no Mississippi in Germany, those populations are in other countries.
If you compare the whole European Union to the US the disparity is much smaller.
>It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
I think that is an exaggeration, I can't find that statistic anywhere.
But you have to look at people in your demographic, not the entire country.
The US has the best health care in the world if you can afford it.
Just about anybody can get insurance and set aside the max out of pocket costs to insure themselves and their family, but they will take a considerable hit in quality of life, home size, luxuries, etc. In other countries that health care is paid for with lowered salaries through taxes and quality of life takes a hit anyway.
There are plenty of large European countries with good healthcare systems: Germany, France and the UK, for example. I don't think there's a reason why countries with 60-80 million residents can establish good healthcare systems, but countries with 300 million people can't (even China, a much larger and poorer country than the US, is approaching universal coverage). But even if that were the case, individual US states could step in and set up their own universal healthcare systems.
> There is no Mississippi in Germany, those populations are in other countries.
It depends on what you mean by that comparison. Germany relatively recently absorbed a much poorer East Germany. There are still states like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that are much poorer than the average in Germany. Yet they're all integrated into Germany's very good healthcare system. It could be the same in the US, but it isn't, for political reasons.
> If you compare the whole European Union to the US the disparity is much smaller.
This is not true. The European Union member states have a much greater range of GDP/capita than US states.
You would have to be very rich indeed to achieve the same level of cover as is provided in comparable economies (UK/DE/AU etc), because the insurance is expensive and out of pocket costs / copay is high, and you may discover you cannot get or maintain insurance once you develop a chronic condition.
But even if you dealt with a broker and crafted a special insurance insurance product to deal with the eventuality of being denied further insurance, you are ignoring something significant: you don't improve the quality of life or lifespan of the population by making healthcare only accessible to the rich.
The ACA has removed the pre-existing condition problem, and significantly changed some of the pricing considerations. It’s more affordable now than many are led to believe based on the old structure.
It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
Meanwhile, those developed countries with functioning health care systems that you can return to whenever don’t bother with worldwide taxation.