This may be true for some places but I can tell you with certainty that they are lower in Switzerland especially for lower incomes.
Your Taxes are insane high for medium wage workers and practically non-existent for the wealthy. How is anyone ever supposed to climb the ladder like that?
> Your Taxes are insane high for medium wage workers
A single person earning $200k in the state of Washington pays ~$52.5k in federal income tax and social security. An effective tax rate of 26%. Is that insanely high?
I am well aware $200k is nowhere near the median wage.
The person I replied to wrote “How is anyone ever supposed to climb the ladder like that?”. Seeing as no one is “climbing the ladder” from earning a median wage their whole life, I looked at the tax rate for an “upper middle” wage salary (which anyone can earn even if their parents had 0 wealth).
Since tax rates for a median salary are much lower than this, I am not sure how it contradicts my point.
Yeah pity those poor fools with their.. stress free access to insulin and.. never having to watch a loved one die from not being able to afford insulin. But yeah, taxes.
By pretending that this is some kind of common occurrence, you are engaging in fearmongering. You're 10X more likely to be killed by lightning in the US than you are to die due to lack of insulin.
According to this (sympathetic) website[0], ~4 people in the US die every year due to a lack of insulin. Meanwhile, ~40 people in the US are killed by lightning strike[1].
These things are never cut and dry. This is presenting these absolutely clear-cut stories, but it's not like this sort of thing is accurately tracked in any way.
One in four people who have diabetes report that they take less than they should due to cost. This has knock-on long-term health effects that can cumulate in an earlier death than would otherwise happen. Those effects will never be captured in the way that lightning strikes can be captured.
Others die who were never formally diagnosed, and so wouldn't be captured in statistics like this.
>You're 10X more likely to be killed by lightning in the US than you are to die due to lack of insulin.
But 100,000x[0] more likely to lose a foot due to lack of insulin than by getting it cooked off by a lightning strike.
[0]Estimated. Not sure if they even track loss of limbs by lightning strikes since it's such a rare occurrence but the diabetic, poor and footless can be found in just about any major city.
Yet somehow the US spends the most per person health care...
($10,623.85 per capita vs Switzerland $9,870.66 vs Norway 8,239.10)
And manages to NOT cover 30 million people...
(10+% vs Switzerland, Universal, vs Norway, Universal)
No matter how you look at it, we spend more on private insurance than anywhere else in the world and manage to cover less people with it.
On top of that, medical debts are the single largest cause of bankruptcies in the US.
(Third overall worldwide ranking for US vs 100th for Switzerland vs 118th for Norway)
And despite (oh mer ghurd socialism!) paying the most, we rank among the worst for first world countries.
(37th for United States vs 20th for Switzerland vs 11th for Norway)
TLDR: We pay more for less and get worse care overall.
If I could trade in my private insurance premiums for taxes and get better care as a result without the risk of bankruptcy, why wouldn't I? Bonus, I wouldn't lose my health insurance if I had to switch jobs. We are one of the only countries in the world that tie health care to employment, which is detrimental to everyone.
There's always the people who chime in about "but, but, but private insurance means you don't have to wait 6 months to have surgery!"
I had to wait year. US Health Insurance is a fucking nightmare to deal with that the largest allocation of man hours within a hospital is billing between multiple networks. Imagine the savings on that alone if coverage was universal.
I waited on a six month long waiting list to see a pretty common type of specialist in the largest metro area in the US. Every practice and doctor I got in touch with had a similarly long waiting list, even if I paid in advance with cash. Some people will die waiting on that list.
