quote:

Originally posted by SBrooks:
My wife has a friend who's a nurse from Sweden or Switz - can't remember which...

She said (after working healthcare in both U.S. and over there) that socialized healthcare would never work in U.S. We are so much larger than they are is part of it. She also recognizes that Americans would not be willing to wait months and months for an appointment like Euro-folks are accustomed to doing.

Also told of several cases where older people were refused treatment over there. "You're too old to be worth the gov spending X dollars on you to cure or treat that particular ailment." Go ahead and pass on and let us spend money on the young....

This is exactly right. Same situation in Iceland. You just can not compare those healthcare systems to the US. Nothing in common.

bottom line:

their 'success' if you call it that - does not scale well to a population of hundreds of millions

it's easy to host a party for 8 people

now host one for 350 people

completely different scenario

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Here's a documentary about Sweden that debunks a lot of what Bernie Sanders has talked about.

quote:

Originally posted by Rigby470:
I'm not sure of the exact details about Sweden, but I heard someone once point out that so many of the European countries the Left points to in terms of socialistic success are not really Socialist. They are capitalist with massive welfare programs, paid for by enormous taxes and the fact they have no military to pay for. They outsource their national defense to the United States.

Bigno.
Sweeden and the other Scandinavian countries are massive welfare states. They are capitalist based economies, as evidenced by all the private business' that exist however, the taxation rates are enormously high ergo, the welfare system.

Every time somebody squaks about '..but, what about the Scandinavians?" the easy throw back is: Scale and culture.

The size and the diversity of the US alone would make any application of the welfare state model unbelievably difficult and fraught with various forms of resistance up-to and including violence. Lots of lefties like to cite '..how the Scandinavians do it', however once you start digging deeper into their 'ideas' you realize that they're not talking about 'Scandinavia' they're talking about Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Soviet Union, full-blown Marxism.

The US is also incredibly diverse in both racial and cultural aspects, there's very few countries that's is as diverse as the US. Part of what drives the social harmony in the Scandinavian countries and the top-producing Asian countries is they're culturally and racially homogeneous. In all of those countries, there's quite a lot social pressure to conform, if you don't conform, you're an outcast, very little sympathy offered; pretty old school. The Scandinavians, particularly the Danes have societal conformity rules called the Law of Jante. Look it up, You Tube has a number people outlining about how oppressive it is and how they hate it.

They are avid capitalists to generate enough money to afford their system.