"Jan" wrote in
:

I suggest that you never lived in Europe, or that your memory is
failing you.
I live in Norway, my annual income is around $ 100 000.
The tax I pay is around 30%, this is including health insurance and
pension. If I visit my doctor I pay a small fee, as I also do for
medicine, but expences exciding $200 a year are free. Hospital is
free, you may have to wait a few weeks depending on your illness. My
mother who is 85 waited 4 weeks for a hip operation, which of course
war free, as was 4 weeks in a nursing home after the operation.
When I retire I will get a pension of œ35 000 per year, not so much,
but as we have progessiv taxasion the tax will be low.
Of course if you want additional and privat insurance or pension that
is up to you.
I think we are in line with most European countries, I have not heard
anything near to your story. Even former Eastern Europe had a good and
free health care.
And as this also is a cruising NG that I follow, I will mention that i
have a sailboat, Kelt 850.
Jan




Jan, my apologies for the Americans' view of socialized medicine
expressed to you. They are under constant, heavy pressure by the
billionaire doctors' union, the American Medical Association, who has a
lot to lose if Americans ever get any kind of socialized medicine that
doesn't leave the poor bleeding in the streets. Many of the posters
here are those very rich American doctors sailing their new yachts as a
result of the American system of massive payments for the most mediocre
medical service, while the other major criminals in the medical
business, the insurance companies between the doctors' riches and the
victims' wallets skim off as much or maybe more than the doctors get...a
double taxation on the working class buying medical insurance. Medical
insurance companies do not become amazingly rich by paying doctor and
hospital bills of sick people. On the contrary, medical insurance
companies want nothing to do with any kind of medical risk patients,
only the medically fit that don't make large claims with the resources
to pay large insurance premiums for no service, thousands per month.
This medical burden also causes EMPLOYERS' to flee under the heavy load
of the American medical profession's love of wealth, the reason
everything that used to be made in America has now moved off to more
socialized countries of Asia and Europe where employers don't have to
pay outrageous medical insurance premiums to enrich the medical and
insurance classes.

Noone in America gives a shit about providing healthcare to the poor,
the unemployed, old retired people....unless they band together and
throw politicians into the street, of course.

You'll never convince any Americans who've never been the beneficiaries
of another country's socialist medical system, like the systems in
civilized European countries, that anything good comes out of them.
They've always been told otherwise by the Ministry of Propaganda known
as American News Media.

The concept of paying doctors bonuses to PREVENT diseases in the first
place is totally foreign to them. Doctors make money here by making
people SICK, heavily dosing them with recurrant drugs at exhorbitant
prices to keep them on the hook, so to speak, just like any drug dealer
on the street.

I have a saying, "Well people don't make payments on waterfront
property." Well people don't have to pay doctors, so are not the big
cash cow. SICK people make doctors billionaires. The country is loaded
up with hypocondriacs (sp??) who are just SO proud of their last $70,000
operation they can't wait to tell you all about it. My parents were two
of them. The day my father died, his pharmacist lost $8000/month in
prescription sales, alone. His doctor lost thousands, too. He was one
of the "science project" patients that keep paying and paying and
paying...for that waterfront mansion they live in and the new Mercedes
in their garages....

ON TOPIC - Not to mention their new Beneteau at the finest marina in the
city....(c;