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There are differences in socialized health care: Norway does a good job, Italy has socialized healthcare also but basically shortchanged it spending just $2,500 per-person when it's an aging population hoping for the best.
I wouldn't mind a Norwegian style health-care system but America is to corrupt to have it and it couldn't be implemented. But a more government-based health-care here would more like a third-world country, Italy or Spain it would not be like Norway.
They don't mention that Italy and Spain rolled the dice and hoped for the best and shortchanged their healthcare system that barely scraping by because they have had major economic problems for a very long time.
I looked at a map of hospitals in the area where this is happening and the amount of hospitals per-capita is a fraction of other countries because they spend only $2,500 USD per year on health care.
All socialized medicine countries are not created equal. Italy and Norway have mainly government revenue funded systems and Norway allocates a fortune because it can and has a very small population.
Italy and Spain over the years gutted their majority government run systems because when that is what they did to remain solvent. Looks like their health care systems have been on the brink for a very long time and any sort of spike causes tremendous strain.
The Italian Healtcare system has been ranked as the second best in the world by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Italians have the 6th highest life expectancy in the world.
Healthcare spending in Italy accounted for 9.2% of GDP in 2012, and latest figures suggest around 8.94 of GDP, which is slightly below the European average but overall is not that bad.
Norway spends around 10.50 however Norway doesn't have debts like the US in fact quite the opposite it has a vast Sovereign wealth fund of around $1 Trillion in relation to a country of 5.3 million making it one of the richest countries on earth.
As for Italy it has been the subject of severe financial crisis, as has Spain, and Italian banks are still on the brink.
I prefer to actually read articles from actual residents of communities and see their take on their healthcare. It's the people who have to use the system that know if it works or not.
And just reading this for new expats doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling that it's all that great. One pharmacy in a town is open 24/7 - hopefully they mean for a town of maybe 200 people and not one of 20,000.
Italy is refusing to treat anyone over 60 for the Chinese coronovirus. You want "death panels" in America???
That's not true. Overwhelmed hospitals are having to make tough medically guided triage decisions where those over 60 with other terminal complications may not get ventilators, that aren't available to begin with. Any taxed system is going to have to make decisions like that, our hospitals included.
Italy is refusing to treat anyone over 60 for the Chinese coronovirus. You want "death panels" in America???
Well then, maybe you should volunteer to begin building temporary hospitals instead of making nonsensical hyperbolic comments on a message board.
They ran out of hospital space, yet have greater numbers of hospital beds per-capita than we do.
It has nothing to do with socialized health care.
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