European politics

[voigt1240]

Lol. "Is the UK still counted as Europe?"

The UK drifted into the North american continent and thus became part of North America after leaving the EU. Everybody knows this.

[fightinfrenchman]

Lol. "Is the UK still counted as Europe?"

Great use of quotation marks

[chris1089]

Lol. "Is the UK still counted as Europe?"

Great use of quotation marks

It's reported speech sorry.

[Amsel_]

Tell me about the national healthcare system in your country, ESOC. Does it work well? Why or why not?

[voigt1240]

Denmark has a public health care system. We pay through our taxes and everyone can use ambulances, hospitals and doctors without paying anything but taxes. Everyone is entitled to help, not only the rich.

Also, if the waiting list is too long you have the right to see other hospitals in Denmark or even private hospitals in Denmark or other public hospitals within the EU.

It is by far the best health care system in the world. I have died twice and was ressurected both times by government necromancers, and I have experienced very little tissue rotting.

[duckzilla]

Germany has an in-between thing, I guess. By law, everyone has to have a health insurance (thanks Bismarck!), which also means that it is difficult for insurance companies to decline someone. You can choose between different insurers, classified as private or public insurance companies. Both the private and the public insurance companies are in competition with each other and among themselves.

There is some critique because of a lack of solidarity of people with private health insurance, but generally the health system seems to work rather well. I don't think that I ever had to pay (directly) for anything health related. Which is nice, because I had a heart surgery at the age of 5 and an eye surgery at the age of 7.

[Dolan]

@Amsel_
It's a very complicated subject and I doubt you will find those kinds of people who have in-depth knowledge of their national health systems here.
I had a uni prof who was very knowledgeable about our national health system, he could describe how funds circulated through the sytem at every point, which were the bottlenecks in the system, which were the worst money wasters. You need someone who knows how the system works institutionally (based on laws) and how the money are spent each year (the breakdown in expenses), the actual capacity of the sytem, its projected capacity based on yearly expenditure, etc.

My perception as a client/contributor is that the system has improved a lot in recent years. It has been fully digitalised, everyone gets their health card with their unique chip, so that everywhere you go in the country and need to access public health services, they can find your file immediately. On a number of occasions I had to go to the hospital to pick up someone who was doing cancer treatment and I was impressed how clean and well-furnished the hospital was, compared to about 5-6 years before, the last time I went to the same hospital.

To qualify for its services, you need to contribute to the tune of at least 10% of 12 minimum wages per year. This is mandatory for all wagies. There is also an optional public health insurance, which allows people who make less than the minimum wage (because they don't work for a wage, for example freelancers or farmers) to pay only 10% of 6 minimum wages per year. In this special case, the state will subsidise the other half, so that you can still be insured, even if your income is very low. If you can afford more, of course, you can get some extra private health insurance at more expensive private clinics and hospitals.

What do you get for this? Most expenses incurred by treating serious diseases and illnesses are supported by the public system (cancers, handicaps, neuro diseases, non-plastic surgeries, etc). Dental care is not supported. Seasonal or elective vaccines are not supported either, so if you're planning on taking a trip to some African country and you need to get some anti-malaria vaccine, it's on your expense, because it's not the result of a health condition you currently have.

Services are generally ok, probably not as sophisticated and well-equipped as those from more developed EU countries which also have some solid medical research institutions, but you have a good chance at surviving conditions that are treatable in the rest of the EU. Doctors' wages in the public system have increased massively here during the last few years, to the point that they're basically a new social caste; their wages are almost close to wages from Western countries, which is a lot considering the purchasing power here. The reason for this is that Romania has lost so many doctors to other EU countries since we joined the union, that politicians have panicked and basically increased doctors' wages at an explosive rate. The best Romanian doctors are probably working now in France, Germany and other EU countries, where they were attracted by much better wages and working conditions, at least back when their wages here were pretty low. This massive increase in doctors' wages has probably managed to stop the brain drain to some extent. On the other hand, those doctors that have stayed home are mostly older ones, who didn't speak a European language well enough to be able to practice in another EU country and who were too old to learn new tricks.

Does the system work well? Well, if it's still up, it works. Though, again, I'm not an expert in its inner workings, so I can't tell you much about its financial underpinnings, whether it operates on a deficit or not, whether we're getting enough value out of how much public expense goes into it, and so on. You'd have to talk to a consultant specialised in the public health system and that kind of expertise doesn't come for free, as you probably know.

[Goodspeed]

Tell me about the national healthcare system in your country, ESOC. Does it work well? Why or why not?

We have some kind of weird mix, I don't even know the details tbh. Everyone pays about 120 euros a month for insurance (it's mandatory) and on top of that there's a payroll tax specifically for health care, I guess that helps keep the premiums relatively low so that people with low incomes can pay them comfortably. I think that's it as far as funding goes. Health care providers are privately owned.

I'm happy with it. It's not super expensive and I pretty much know I'll be taken care of.

[chris1089]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

[KoenigRother]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany

ye, i have had both national and private insurances and they seem to function quite well.

[Amsel_]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What do you think causes these issues? Lack of funding? Bureaucracy?

[n0el]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What is a long waiting time? What makes something important? Just curious.

[gibson]

Its a long waiting time because in a system where 100 people are sick and 50 get treated the waiting time is going to be much shorter than a system where 100 people are sick and 100 get treated. Obviously not a valid argument.

[chris1089]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What is a long waiting time? What makes something important? Just curious.

A couple of examples. The waiting time for hip operations is something like 9+-3 months. I think I remember accurately that cancer diagnosis is really bad over here.
You often can't get osteopath or physio care unless you have a very dehabilitating injury. Can't get ears flushed.

[chris1089]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What do you think causes these issues? Lack of funding? Bureaucracy?

Severely reduced incentive to be efficient with resources - no profit incentive. Also the fact that politicians have been happy to throw money at it for decades probably doesn't help.

[fightinfrenchman]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What is a long waiting time? What makes something important? Just curious.

A couple of examples. The waiting time for hip operations is something like 9+-3 months. I think I remember accurately that cancer diagnosis is really bad over here.
You often can't get osteopath or physio care unless you have a very dehabilitating injury. Can't get ears flushed.

You can clean your ears yourself lol

[gibson]

In the UK it sucks.
Long waiting times, can't get treatment unless it is deemed important, absolutely huge drain on taxpayer. It's a ridiculous proportion of government expenditure.

What is a long waiting time? What makes something important? Just curious.

A couple of examples. The waiting time for hip operations is something like 9+-3 months. I think I remember accurately that cancer diagnosis is really bad over here.
You often can't get osteopath or physio care unless you have a very dehabilitating injury. Can't get ears flushed.

I bought several of these, works great

[Horsemen]

The UK is the world's 6th largest sector but you can't get your ears flushed

[Amsel_]

Can people who are happy about their country's state healthcare service tell me if their system has profit incentives to do things efficiently? What do you think makes your system more efficacious than the NHS?

[Dolan]

@Amsel_
Since public healthcare doesn't usually charge any money, there's no profit incentive. The pressure to improve services comes either from politics or directly from people filing complaints, suing for malpraxis, reporting. A lot of things that went wrong in the public health system were exposed by the media here and that put political pressure on the government to solve those issues. Recently, doctors' own professional organisations have started taking more actions against members of their own profession: if a doctor is found to have broken the medical code of conduct, he can be excluded or suspended.

Can't really tell how this compares to the NHS. Their system is probably a few tiers above ours in every single way, but their country is also a lot more crowded than ours. England's population density is 430/km², Romania's is 84.4/km². Imagine how choked up their health system must be, despite being a much richer country with a much higher income per capita and a lot more staff employed by the NHS. On paper, they have more NHS medical staff per 100k people, but I'm sure people are a lot more careful about their health there than here. People living in the countryside here don't really do much for their health until old age or until it's too late.

[KoenigRother]

german healthcare system doesnt have profit incentive. it is largely nullsum calculation i guess...

again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany

quote from there:

"According to this basic idea, an almost totally regulated health care market like in the UK were not very productive, but also a largely deregulated market in the United States would not be optimal. Both systems would suffer concerning sustainable and comprehensive patient care. Only a hybrid of social well-balanced and competitive market conditions created a relevant optimum.[48] Nevertheless, forces of the healthcare market in Germany are often regulated by a variety of amendments and health care reforms at the legislative level, especially by the "Social Security Code" (Sozialgesetzbuch- SGB) in the past 30 years."

not very detailed but idk

[Horsemen]

Can people who are happy about their country's state healthcare service tell me if their system has profit incentives to do things efficiently? What do you think makes your system more efficacious than the NHS?

This is a great website btw, good cheap surgeries:
https://surgerycenterok.com/

Btw it's cheap because they don't accept insurance.

[voigt1240]

Once again on top. Suck it yanks.

[Dolan]

We're making Europe great again. MEGA.

[Dolan]

Relevant to this topic:
Teacher decapitated in France after showing Mohammed cartoons
https://news.yahoo.com/teacher-decapita ... 03732.html

An assailant on Friday decapitated a history teacher in France who had recently shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class, police said.
A police spokesman confirmed he was then shot dead after threatening officers with weapons.
A source close to the police said witnesses had heard the attacker shout "Allah Akbar", or "God is Great".

Twitter post made after the French teacher was decapitated by a radical Muslim

I blurred out the head of the teacher, because it's gore, but I still think people need to confront this, they need to realise what these people are capable of.
A teacher beheaded in broad daylight in France for showing cartoons of a religious figure in a school class. In 2020.

Yeah, nah, I don't think Macron's policy of "integrating" these radical Muslims will work. I think they just need to be given a one-way ticket back to their holy lands.
It's either you integrate or get that ticket back to those lands where people have more sympathy for your warped beliefs.
Yet more evidence that true multiculturalism doesn't really work. It only works when their original cultures get so diluted and neutered, that it creates enough indifference to never cause any major cultural clashes.