@davidaugust When you are paying for private healthcare, you are also paying the providers margin.
That makes it much more expensive that tax funded healthcare systems that don't take profits. About twice as much in the US than in the EU, with poorer outcomes.

@davidaugust

There are many other benefit to Norwegian taxes.

Lots of people have really good govt jobs here. Good conditions with good pay. This places pressure on corporations to offer good conditions as well. Everyone benefits even if they don't work for the govt.

They also have a wealth tax, which has the net effect of keeping housing affordable. Instead of investors buying lots of houses to rent out and driving up the cost of home ownership, people have a real shot at buying a home to live in.

The third benefit I should mention is everyone in Norway gets to bitch and moan about how much tax they pay, because they have so much time off work to gather and talk to one another!

@davidaugust Warum übernehmen wir nichts davon und lassen uns stattdessen anpöbeln, wir würden zu wenig für die Wirtschaft tun?

#merzKANNesNICHT #taxtherich

@davidaugust

From Germany, I absolutely agree. And it's interesting to note that healthcare is not tax financed here.

There are so many different implementations of this all over the industrialized world, and all of them work. Single payer tax-financed, multipayer tax-financed or completely private, or a mix like here in Germany.

But hey, dumb maga-american geniuses hear "50% taxes" on Faux Knews and fall for out-of-context misinformation or even outright lies, because they have no idea how a progressive tax system in an advanced country works. An average earner here pays probably lower taxes than in the US, but we have mandatory dues for social security including healthcare. They conflate this with taxes because that's what their tax-evading oligarchs tell them. What they don't tell them is that we don't have to pay for everything out of pocket. No extra premiums, and above all, no absurd copays, no surprise bills, no need to walk to the ER because you can't afford the ambulance. And most definitely no out-of-network nonsense.

Also, no PTO but real sick leave and real vacation days. Fresh mothers who don't have to return to their slave jobs the other day. No people dying because they can't pay for insuline. And we don't have one-person death panels in insurance offices who decide whether you get therapy.

@davidaugust “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

@davidaugust All told we're probably paying about as much. Especially with the mad king randomly taxing stuff now.

We just get nothing for it. Absolutely nothing. Every penny goes into corporate pockets now.