To counter your anecdote with my anecdote, I've observed the complete opposite.
An American professional will easily afford a car (and two cars for a 2-adult household), will be able to go out to lunch regularly and go out to dinner when they please. If they want to see a specialist for a medical issue they'll have an appointment in a day.
A Danish professional may not have a car at all for a few years out of college and will likely struggle to have a second car for their partner even as a senior-level employee. They will bring their lunch every day and rarely if ever go out for dinner. Their medical issues will take weeks or months to be seen if deemed non-emergency and they'll have less choice in which doctor they see.
It's probably easier to be at the bottom of society in western Europe than in the US, but for anyone in the American middle class their quality of life would go down substantially if the moved to Scandinavia.
Being Danish myself I remember eating lunch out almost every day, and eating dinner out with my wife and kid several times a month. And this was at real restaurants without famous names or ads on tv, not at these fast food chain "restaurants" that I saw parents take their kids to in the Midwest :-)
As you mention is common, I biked to work or took the metro. It's really not necessary or even much of a convenience in Copenhagen to have a car. Don't Americans have more cars because American cities are sprawling, have little public transportation and few sidewalks? In New York, a compact American city with great sidewalks and great public transportation, almost no one I knew owned a car.
But I agree as for the waiting time to see specialists for non life threatening issues. That part of the Danish healthcare system is really not working well.
You are confusing lifestyle choices with lifestyle constraints.
Europe in general has a much less developed culture of going out for food. People will do it occasionally, but often prefer to prepare there own, even in a social setting. This is driven by culture, not but by money.
Much of China eats out at least once daily, often twice or three times, has cars or at least motorbikes/electric scooters, and doesn't pay any tax at all.
I don't know about that, I'd take European paid time off even if it meant giving up half my income. Who cares if I have two cars if I have no where to drive to except work?
This is a different lifestyle choice. I have many friends who could more than easily afford a car (or two), but they choose not to have one - the public transportation system is more than enough for them.
Also, I live in Serbia, and honestly even we don't wait "weeks or months" for non-emergency issues. As someone who has lived in the US as well, I've actually waited longer in the US hospital than in the Serbian one. I'm really not sure where that stereotype of "you have to wait months for surgery in Europe" comes from.
The National Health Service in the UK has this as a strong stereotype; and it is true in some places. But the only two times I've used a UK hospital, I've been done within 24 hours.
Part of me wants (without any evidence) to say this is not to do with the socially provided/not socially provided difference, but with how that benefit is provided.
I've lived in the Netherlands where the state healthcare took the form of (mandatory, price-fixed) insurance which you used by buying medical care and paying for with your insurance. That allowed me to use any hospital in NL or indeed the world (with the proviso that it was same, cheaper than NL).
There are ongoing battles in the UK to let that kind of "market portability" happen, but the way that the NHS bureaucracy works makes it hard; and maybe its the lack of that end consumer choice which lets things sometimes get so slow. (I think that's a similar complaint to HMO users in the US)
What's the point of being able to get an appointment in a day for a specialist if you'll eventually have to go into debt or file bankruptcy to be able to afford that specialist?
I have average health insurance. My insurance pays 80% of my costs until I have spent $5,000 and then it pays 100% after that.
As I said in my original post, I'm talking about the middle class not the poor. A maximum out-of-pocket of 5k or 6k should not bankrupt a middle class person.
The point is that the Heathcare system is there to take care of your health and not finances. Who cares you are bankrupt if you will be still alive? I never could understand why socialists are so crazy about healthcare being cheap and not about it being effective. So you'd like yo have cancer treated next year and be in good financial situation or have first chemo tomorrow and be bankrupt. Because you know, you can't have both.
> The point is that the Heathcare system is there to take care of your health and not finances. Who cares you are bankrupt if you will be still alive?
Lots of people -- particularly people who have other people depending on their resources for healthcare and other essentials -- which is why in addition to the cost of healthcare bankrupting people, it also discourages them from choosing timely (and more cost effective, though still expensive) interventions in many cases (because they gamble that maybe it will resolve on its own and not require the expensive intervention). Which results in later, more expensive, less effective interventions -- which takes care of both health and finances poorly, resulting in not only some people being bankrupt by high costs, but other people (sometimes the same people) being dead (and even more, alive but worse off than they would have been with earlier, cheaper intervention) because of the discouraging effects of the high costs.
> I never could understand why socialists are so crazy about healthcare being cheap and not about it being effective.
People interested in socialized medicine are generally concerned with it being accessible, "cheap" is seen as desirable as a means to that end.
An American professional will easily afford a car (and two cars for a 2-adult household), will be able to go out to lunch regularly and go out to dinner when they please. If they want to see a specialist for a medical issue they'll have an appointment in a day.
A Danish professional may not have a car at all for a few years out of college and will likely struggle to have a second car for their partner even as a senior-level employee. They will bring their lunch every day and rarely if ever go out for dinner. Their medical issues will take weeks or months to be seen if deemed non-emergency and they'll have less choice in which doctor they see.
It's probably easier to be at the bottom of society in western Europe than in the US, but for anyone in the American middle class their quality of life would go down substantially if the moved to Scandinavia.