Europe Medical Care is Better than the US. Time to End the Myth.

reply to post by DigitalKid


Walmart did not rebrand to anything, they are still Walmart. In 1995 they BOUGHT OUT ASDA in the UK and have run them ever since,, but they have not rebranded any of their stores anywhere else to ASDA.

Get your facts straight.

Then why do my friends from England fly to the US for any medical issues??????
Sounds like pro-Obama B*S* to me!

daveinats
Then why do my friends from England fly to the US for any medical issues??????
Sounds like pro-Obama B*S* to me!

Wow, even for a headache, toothache, thumped toe, laryngitis?

Man, your friends must be rich! Oh, and therefore they don't care about the costs of the US medical system, of course! Thats it, right?

daveinats
Then why do my friends from England fly to the US for any medical issues??????
Sounds like pro-Obama B*S* to me!

i think you are lying..just like you say the others do you see it?


Show me those friends.....they don´t exist.

Unless you mean some friends who go to the us because of plastic surgery..thats the only area in which your doctors are leading
(and btw in england it does not cost extra money..watch sicko..there is the uk system)

reply to post by lakesidepark


The Daily Mail is doing what it does - hype and scare. I can say this is hype as both of my parents have at different times but both recently suffered cancer and received the appropriate care almost immediately and recovered. Of course there will always be a risk around the amount of people requiring a service against the amount of people able to provide, but as an example of someone whose family has been affected by cancer in the UK, that article does not cover the full picture.

uncommitted
reply to post by lakesidepark

 

The Daily Mail is doing what it does - hype and scare. I can say this is hype as both of my parents have at different times but both recently suffered cancer and received the appropriate care almost immediately and recovered. Of course there will always be a risk around the amount of people requiring a service against the amount of people able to provide, but as an example of someone whose family has been affected by cancer in the UK, that article does not cover the full picture.

Left it too late to edit, so extra post....

My better half had two serious issues for the last year or so, both were diagnosed, reviewed with her as to the options and in both cases operations were required. The process for both took less than a month from diagnosis through to being discharged from hospital with an all clear.

I personally had a scare when I found a lump where you really don't want one. I saw a doctor within a couple of days of contacting the surgery, was given antibiotics to check it wasn't something that would be cured by them and when it became clear it wouldn't I was given an ultrasound within a week. Luckily it wasn't something that required surgery.

All of the above was on the NHS, all of it was carried out professionally where we were able to question the medical staff as to what was to happen and receive informed advice, all of it in a clean, safe environment, and all of it effectively free.

As Stumason and others have pointed out, it's very easy to cherry pick extreme examples of where there are issues (Staffs Trust being a key one at the moment), but then again, no one picks up on the millions who are provided a fantastic service because let's face it, when is good news ever newsworthy?

reply to post by 8675309jenny


Milk in Germany is 4 EU. 2-3 EU if you get it cheap. It is 2.50 a gallon here in SoCal, 5 if you buy Organic. Groceries in the USA are far cheaper than groceries in Europe. Perhaps you're being a bit nostalgic and mis-remembering or you were there during a poor conversion period? The only place I saw cheap milk in Europe was France. Maybe Spain but I didn't have to buy groceries there.

Edit: PER GALLON!! You can only buy milk in EU by the Liter from what I've seen. I never saw a gallon container. So when people say "Milk is only .70 EU" you need to multiply that by 4.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


You realize you can go to a super wal-mart here and get everything for that same price right? I can go into a super-walmart with 50 bucks and get a full weeks worth of groceries.

The quality of the food will be bad, just like at ALDI, but the USA is the biggest exporter of food in the world for a reason.

vkey08
reply to post by DigitalKid

 

Walmart did not rebrand to anything, they are still Walmart. In 1995 they BOUGHT OUT ASDA in the UK and have run them ever since,, but they have not rebranded any of their stores anywhere else to ASDA.

Get your facts straight.

Err I meant and said in the UK, they could of named it Wal-mart but didn't they kept it ASDA, and on all the Asda signs it says part of the Walmart brand of companys, my facts are very straight.

DigitalKid

vkey08
reply to post by DigitalKid

 

Walmart did not rebrand to anything, they are still Walmart. In 1995 they BOUGHT OUT ASDA in the UK and have run them ever since,, but they have not rebranded any of their stores anywhere else to ASDA.

Get your facts straight.

Err I meant and said in the UK, they could of named it Wal-mart but didn't they kept it ASDA, and on all the Asda signs it says part of the Walmart brand of companys, my facts are very straight.

No you said that they rebranded to ASDA, they did not, nor was it ever a plan to. WalMart bought the failing supermarket/chain store ASDA in 1995, while it is true that the signs say "Part of the Wal-Mart" family, you did not say that in your post, you claimed quite brashly that they REBRANDED as ASDA from WALMART, which is not in any way now nor has it ever been true.

Forget about the price of food in Germany, they get 6 weeks a year of vacation, and work far less hours weekly than we do in the US.

Workers in Germany have 35 hour work weeks. I hear it is illegal to work on Sundays in Germany.

In the US we work the longest hours of anyone, for that 5 to 8 grand more money we might take home, we get to spend on day care and sin taxes.

Maybe if we had more time off we could do a better job of raising our kids. Isn't that supposed to be purpose behind all of this technology, we live better lives.

It is absolutely moronic to think that we have it better here in the states. That dog might a hunt 15 years ago, but the same claim today is absurd.

This probably has more to do with why people there live longer than anything. Here in the states these days we get it coming and going. That is the true meaning of the free market.

reply to post by poet1b


Do you just make stats up?

The us isn't even in the top 5 for most hours worked:

money.cnn.com...
www.businessinsider.com...

Yes, the German's and French work fewer hours, that is true.

reply to post by raymundoko


We are talking about Europe here. Sure, there are some third world countries that work more hours than the U.S., but no first world nations. What, you want to be like Mexico? I would rather be like Europe.

20somethingfinance.com...

According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”

reply to post by poet1b


And the ironic thing about working more hours is that, generally, productivity in the US is much lower than those countries who work less, so it's a double edge sword. I am surprised the Japanese work less though, they are famously devoted workers.

reply to post by stumason


WTF? The USA is far more productive than those other countries:

en.wikipedia.org...(PPP)_per_hour_worked

Now if you notice you are probably going off old data. Before Germany and France cut their hours they were actually more productive than the USA but by a very small single digit margin.

Now they have less hours, and are far less productive. The USA has double digit margins over both countries.

The country who almost always leads the way in productivity is Luxembourg who has a 40 hour work week, however due to their awesome laws the average work week (All including part time) is around 32 I think. Full time employees average 41.

luxembourg.angloinfo.com...

Also, based off a study done in the UK full time workers in Europe actually are on par with USA full time workers, averaging between 39 and 42 hours a week:

www.theguardian.com...

reply to post by raymundoko


I was going off ONS data produced just a few days ago, which shows the US, France and Germany as all pretty much equal (single digit differences, to coin a phrase) in relation to hours worked. That Wiki link of yours is using data from 2005, apparently.

Besides, I wasn't talking in simply economic terms - if France and Germany can be as productive in GDP terms, but work less hours, then the quality of life is better for them. If the US's productivity per hour is only the same as (or marginally better than) a country where people work less hours to begin with, then it does raise questions about overall productivity...

The point I was trying to make, but perhaps failed to eloquently put across, is that happy, well-rested and energised workers are better than tired, stressed out ones.

Especially one's who then have to worry about paying Dr's bills.....

reply to post by stumason


NO, it's using data from 2013. It has the 2005 data for comparison...click the link in my post then go to per hour worked. It has the data from 2013 and the data from 2005.

reply to post by raymundoko


Ah yes, my mistake ..

Either way, my point still stands. If a country were they, on average, work more hours and yet are only the same or marginally better in GDP/hr worked, that does call into question the overall productivity and also ask questions about worker health and happiness. You'd expect that the more hours worked, the more GDP would be produced, but you're just keeping pace with places where the people work less and have better benefits. Perhaps the US could be more productive if it's workers were treated better?

reply to post by stumason


Stress levels aren't the problem in the USA. Fatness is. And smoking to a lesser extent. And then traffic after that.

About 20%? (need to source) of this country still smokes regularly and around 30% are considered obese. Americans spend an hour a day in a car to commute (something like 25 minutes each way). If you drill down you find that in cities like LA and HON people will commute up to an hour+ each way...every single day.

The lifestyle of Americans are the stress inducers, not the work.

I will say this. I have a friend who graduated university in France in 2009. it took him 2 years to find a regular job (And he looked very earnestly, even applied to positions in other EU countries). He was released with a dozen others a year later and has yet to find another full time employment position. I know we have an issue with graduating students finding work in the USA, but I don't think that it takes them 5 years to find a job with some semblance of security...

So his stress levels are through the roof and he isn't even working...

reply to post by stumason


If it's workers were treated better? You know we have the best employee protection laws in the world right???

www.oecd.org...

Now do you specifically mean hours worked? Pay?

We pay the 2nd best of any country on earth:

en.wikipedia.org...

Granted our Minimum wage is ranked 10th:

www.bloomberg.com...

But minimum wage workers in the USA pay LITTLE TO NO TAXES AT ALL AFTER REBATES! They also often receive food stamps, medicare/medicaid and in extreme situations section 8. Whereas minimum wager workers in other countries pay taxes ranging from 20-42%. So our minimum wage earners actually have a higher effective pay. Germany for example has the same poverty rate as the USA, 15% and that is the lowest poverty rate in EU countries.

en.wikipedia.org...

So ultimately I am going to assume you are only referring to hours, because that is the only number that data would back you up on. Again, Our full time workers only work 2-3 hours more than their full time counterparts in Europe. The national average is lower in Europe yes, but their full time workers still put in 39 hours a week. (a few hours of which are overtime)