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This is from my country, Norway.
that was interesting
though I live in North Idaho, my dad's side of the family is norwegian.
Which is kinda wierd, becouse that video said that Norway is very liberal, well, my family is about as conservitive as you can get.
I love Norway (in the summer, I'd never go there in the winter). I've got family there and everyone is so relaxed. That said, not even they have what I would call a great healthcare system (imo I don't think one exists yet). It has a very good socialist medicine system where mundane sickness and injuries are treated quickly and well, but it can still try your patience when it comes to more esoteric things. My family there spent literally years bringing their son to doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with him, trying to get referals to go to specialists (which took ages), and they didn't get the right answer until they came to the US for vacation and brought him to a specialist here...
It'll be interesting to see what happens to that system when Norway's considerable natural resource exports eventually dry up, and they find they can't so easily afford it.
Not really. Ideological reasons are often a factor in emigration patterns. I'm a Brit/German-descended Florida native with both pre-US Protestant roots and a step-grandmother (on the 'Anglo' side of the family) who fled Weimar Germany for St. Louis.
And, since I still live in Florida, I live under a state government that's riddled with descendents of top cronies of the Batista dictatorship who fled Castro's takeover in '59. They're nearly as hard right a crowd as the Castro clique is hard left, although I kind of suspect they'd be about as villainously authoritarian as Castro was if they held as much power.
The price of healthcare is a serious problem for any country, but keep in mind the most expensive healthcare system in the world is that of the U.S.
Regarding exports drying up, remember that Norway does not just export oil and gas, but also hydro power. No country in Europe produces more of it than Norway does.
To put things in context I currently pay $16,800 per year out of pocket (not including co-pays or deductibles) for slightly better than average medical insurance and that's been increasing by about $500 per year for quite some time with no end in sight. I personally find the competency of the doctors that I visit to be somewhat less than that of the average car mechanic and I live near Boston which I would think would be a good place to find decent doctors given all the hospitals and universities in the area.
Holymo! 
I pay EUR 114 per month for my health insurance and that is already including some kind of "plus" package. I know US and Europe are not comparable, taxes are higher here, but still...
Hey, you think it's expensive to save lives in the U.S., you should see what we pay to kill people! $40,000,000 for every Iraqi we kill, and $23,000,000 for every criminal we execute. Don't mess with the USA, man!
Well yeah, the US healthcare system is in shambles. But just because our system sucks (except for very wealthy people or those whose jobs come with good healthcare) does not making better systems good.
The biggest problem is that there's not a single sustainable system out there. They're all going to hell, and fast. Norway is probably one of the best off - it'll be able to afford its system as long as oil is still so important, and then some because they're forward-looking and are saving a significant portion of their oil revenue for when it's not enough anymore. And even the best socialist healthcare systems suffer from horrible government beaurocracy, which is great at making it hard to get the care you need, when you need it. Beaurocracy makes me think of the DMV; any semblance of that in a healthcare system makes me cringe.
The US system only works if you can afford it, which most people can't. But for those who can afford it, it works the way it should work for everyone.
It just bothers me when people say things like "the US healthcare system sucks, we should adopt _____'s system." Because it's just not helpful. Overhauling our healthcare system is going to be a massive undertaking with huge growing pains. If we do overhaul the system, we shouldn't just replace it with a somewhat-less-broken system that's going to be in just as bad shape as what we have now not long after it gets started. We need to come up with a creative solution that will work for our country, in the long term; not just pick the best bad idea that people have come up with.
Norway is a beautiful country. I visited Bergen and Oslo last summer. I saw a single cop (driving a car) my whole stay. People were exceptionally kind, sincere, and the it was very peaceful from my experience. There was one area of downtown Oslo (by the central train station) that had a druggie gathering, but there was no violence anywhere.
A universal health care system like in canada or Norway is to ensure that everyone can afford health care, I should clarify when i mean everyone can afford, it is true that if you are sick and you are poor, then it is better to live in canada than in the U.S, where you don't have to be in debt so that you can go to the doctor, but for serious illness, well it is not as efficient as say the U.S, where if you can afford it, you can pay your own way to the specialists or rely on very good and expensive health insurances. In Ontario, probably the same as in many other provinces, people go to the U.S for a lot of diagonsistic services for serious illness. Otherwise, you have to be at the mercy of the system. One of the reason for that is there are simply not enough MRIs to go around to serving everyone, so people have to be put on a wait list and you dont't get special treatment here if you are wealthy. in some provinces, there are private health clicnics that provides small surgeries that can be performed and finished within a day period. Many people on the left or even that are not so left don't like it because that makes us to have a two tier system.
I live in Canada, and as far as the healthcare goes all I can say is, they try. Calling it a difficult task is a ridiculous understatement. It has it problems but as someone who has been to the enemrgency room at least 4 times to date, I can't be anything but grateful that we have it, and that it works to the degree that it does.
Basically the US population funds the pharmaceutical research for the entire planet. The drug companies can afford to make large deals for bulk rate drugs with countries like Canada because the huge drug bills paid by Americans through their insurance are what predominately fund future research. The end result is the insurance companies make money, the pharmaceutical companies make money, the doctors make way more money than they deserve and middle class America foots the bill while the rest of the world gets a discount. Sweet.
Basically for a commonly prescribed drug for which there is no generic, Plavix 75mg for example, the world pays $3.00/pill and the US pays $5.00/pill. That's a 40% discount which is actually one of the lower discounts that I found. If you use Lipitor 80mg to make the comparison then the US pays $4.00/pill and the rest of the world pays $2.00/pill for a 50% discount. Your welcome world.
A note about how I made these comparisons. Basically you can search online and find a number of online sites based in different countries. It's illegal for US citizens to order drugs abroad but *currently* individuals are not being prosecuted for foreign purchases that are for personal use. The catch is that your insurance company won't pay for it. The other catch is that some online companies claim to have US based sources for some of the same low prices as the rest of the world however they do not disclose the US based dispensing pharmacy. I consider this to be bogus.
The bottom line is the $5 and $4 per pill prices for the two drugs I mention above correlate very well to the prices I see at my local pharmacy where most people buy their drugs. I believe the discouncts above to be very representative although it may be difficult to prove that some online pharmacy that claims to legally sell a $3 Plavix in the US isn't legitimate, but I'll go by the old adage that if it sounds to good to be true then it probably is.
Norway's Socialism is basicly a mix of Capitalism and Kommunism..and that works..
I have been to a hospital 20 times to cure cancer, did it cost me anything? nope, did i need insurance? nope. and i'm alive and get to live my whole life since i'm cured.
Everything is included in the TAX money we pay the state, equality = hapiness.
This has worked the last 100 years.
Thats why i'm never going to move to the states.
Our Police here are not armed and we have the lowest murder rates... theres no wierd gun act here.. becouse if theres no guns why do somebody need a gun to "defend" themselfs?
Plus the other aspect of the US system is that it places a significant uncompetitive burden on US companies and US labor. A company has to consider the cost of healthcare as essentially wages. So someone making $50K a year actually costs $70K a year when you consider family health insurance. In countries where health insurance is covered predominately with taxes then a company only pays $50K for the same worker. Government covered health insurance is basically a government funded subsidy that puts our companies and at a competitive disadvantage.
Why compete? why not just make the doctors work for the Government? theres no disadvantage in Universal Healthcare, it is basicly the single most important public service beside the Police and School.
If you all in the USA shared all the expenses with Tax based on income instead of having some kind of super expensive insurance, you would have alot more money and so on.
I pay 15% of my money each year in Tax.
Get Captalism away from your healtcare.. just imagined your Police being Coca Cola Police and Mc'Donalds Firefighters....
Burger King Schools. capitalism no good in basic need services.
Not really. The system only remains feasible because of the profits from the (mostly) nationalized energy exports. Oil/gas exports alone make up 20% of the GDP, and a significant portion comes from electriciy production as well. Without those supporting the system, tax rates would have to rise to rather unpalatable levels from their current average rates (about a time and a third the US individual tax rates, according to wikipedia) to pay for it.
Basically, Norway is taking those energy exports and just distributing them in the form of healthcare, rather than as cash stipends as seen in other small exporting nations like Kuwait and the UAE.
It would be impossible to copy such a system in the US, as (even ignoring other cost-increasing factors such as massively larger scale, poor diet and lifestyle, etc) we don't have a magic money well that lets the government operate at a massive surplus; the only way to pay for it would be through back-breaking tax rates.
Edit: Looking at the CIA Factbook, Norway is the #3 oil exporter in the world.
[edit] Plus what's the real difference between $20K of back breaking taxes versus $20K of back breaking health insurance. All you're doing is encouraging folks to exit the system and go without insurance which is OK if you're young but is simply not an option for someone my age. And as I pointed out people exiting the system is part of the problem. The benefit of insurance is that it amortizes costs over a hopefully relatively healthy population. As healthy people leave because of cost it just gets worse and worse. [/edit]
Yep that is right plus one more thing to add to that, The US has been importing more than we export for the last couple of decades.
Solution, Use less oil by usig more energy efficent sources, make it Export...tata Universal Healthcare.
We probably are going to have this forever, we have alot of renewable and not renewable resources that are good to Export.
Alu,Wood,Paper,Fish,Crab,Oil,Coal,Tech,Services.
Our Oil will last 200 years and still undiscovered fields wait, we have 200 years World supply off pure Coal that is not mined yet.
We have the best technology to store CO2 beneath the sea floor.
CO2 won't be a problem when everyone can do this and therefore Coal will become alright to use in the future.
It is a rich and small population we have. 4,6 million.
2 Trillion Norwegian krone now (and growing) that we save for future generations.
1$ is about 7KR right now, but it was down to 5KR last summer per dollar.
Whoa whoa slow down there. I never said anything about a hodge podge of incremental modification of what we have now into something else. I can only assume you got that impression from my 'growing pains' statement, but that's not at all what I meant by it. I just meant that switching healthcare models will be extraordinarily difficult and will have to be phased in (and the current model, as well as much of the industry built around it will have to be phased out). People will lose jobs, other people will get jobs, and quirks will have to be worked out. I'd much rather do it right the first time, rather than doing it quickly and poorly, just to have to do it again soon after.
I completely agree that there should be a major study done of the world's different systems, but I don't think we should pick one. Just because something works in another country does not mean a direct copy will function in the US. I think we should pick the best and most fitting aspects of the various healthcare systems, and possibly add new innovations of our own. The whole thing has to be mapped out and phased in as a whole. The current trend of making tiny modifications here and there will at most by a few years before the current system completely collapses; I just hope our politicians get their act together before that happens.
How do you think the healthcare systems of all the other countries you want to copy were created? They were all created by committiee. That's what legislation is.
That was my point, really. If most people could afford it, then the US healthcare system would actually be pretty good. It'd still suck to be at the bottom, but if most people could afford it anyway then it wouldn't be that hard to support the small percentage who can't through taxes and selective government help. But the fact is that our current model has already collapsed - it's just taking time for the pieces to hit the ground.
The philosophy behind privatized healthcare is that the private sector can usually do things more efficiently than government. We've convincingly proven that this philosophy doesn't work for healthcare if we want everybody, or even most people, to have access to good quality healthcare. I'm still skeptical that a 100% socialized healthcare service is the right way to go, though; the only countries capable of sustaining such systems are the ones with magic money wells, as kryo put it.
Every one of your examples has major problems. The UK and France (especially France) aren't going to be able to afford their current healthcare systems for very much longer. Cuba's healthcare isn't really as good as Michael Moore made it out to be, in general; not to mention that being a dictatorship does open some doors that aren't really available to us. I don't know much about healthcare in Australia or New Zealand. Though a will mention that the problems of logistics and beaurocy involved in governmental institutions are exacerbated in larger countries. Canada's system isn't so bad, but elias001 pointed out some reasons why a lot of people are wary about switching to a system like theirs.
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