5 ms·

When making comparisons with Sweden or other countries the cost of healthcare, housing, food, and transportation should be taken into account. Healthcare and t

by sykick 7y ago

When making comparisons with Sweden or other countries the cost of healthcare, housing, food, and transportation should be taken into account. Healthcare and transportation costs are much higher in the U.S. I think too we also have a higher per capita income and I don't know how things balance out. One thing for sure though. I'd rather be poor in Sweden than in the U.S. There is also the fact that many students who start a four year degree end up never graduating. At the college I teach at it is clear that we are marketing to students who should not be going to college and shouldn't realistically expect to get a degree. But we need the money due to lack of state support and as a result standards for passing have gone down. What we have now is a system that has the incentives in the wrong place and this will have bad societal consequences years from now. Like almost everyone else who comments on this topic I have ideas on how to make things better and like almost everyone else those ideas are largely naive.

Mirioron 7y ago
Why would transportation costs be higher in the US? Gasoline is two times cheaper in the US than in Sweden. Food is roughly the same price, depending of what you eat.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  Cars are required in most cities in the US to hold a job due to lack of public transportation. Cars are required in most rural areas in the US because there is no other way around.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    On that second point, a perspective note for non-US people who don't realize: Sweden has about the same geographic area as just California. Only covers about 5% of the whole contiguous US.
    - ryannevius 7y ago
      Size comparison, for reference: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM4NDAyOTc.MTA5MjczODQ*OTIzNTYwNg(MjkwNzQ4MQ~!SE*ODMzOTUzNg.MTQ1MDk0MzI)Mw https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM4NDAyOTc.MTA5MjczODQ...
    - Gwypaas 7y ago
      And there's 40 million people in California compared to 10 million in Sweden. So comparatively California is a densely populated mecca.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Transportation costs for most individuals are related to density at a city level, not a nation level, so I don’t see the relevance of comparing density of a nation.
- sykick 7y ago
  Public transportation is very bad in the U.S. Even in major cities. For the vast majority of people a car is a necessity in the U.S. Most Americans end up in debt to buy a car. Then there is insurance and the opportunity cost of the government having to spend a great deal of money on road maintenance that could otherwise be spent on things like education.
  - treden 7y ago
    European cities have much higher population density, and the lower personal income (often via higher taxes and, ironically, worker protection laws) changes the tradeoff between driving and taking pub trans, so more people take the bus. The tradeoff is that a lot of people live in small boxes. And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too. Would be nice to have some data. One related observation, that seems less surprising the longer I live here, is that europe has no spacex, google, tesla, nasa, coherent mars rovers, the list goes on... if you give people stuff, they're mostly just afraid someone's going to take it away. But yeah, to echo someone else's comment, I'd rather be poor, or even average, in Europe. I guess being super wealthy here wouldn't be that bad either, since nobody's nipping at your heels.
    - reallydontask 7y ago
      > And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too. Do you really think that there isn't economic value in roadworks?
      - dillonmckay 7y ago
        US BS job creation is in healthcare, particularly insurance processing and billing, not roads.
        sschueller 7y ago
        Printing paper checks in the 21st century....
adventskalender 7y ago
But taxes are much lower in the US. Is healthcare even cheaper in Sweden, if you figure in taxes?
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Scuttlebutt is actual healthcare expenditures in places like Sweden are about half that in the US.
  - adventskalender 7y ago
    I find such figures difficult to interpret, though (like here: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-average-wealthy-countries-spend-half-much-per-person-health-u-s-spends https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...) It could be that richer countries simply have more money to spend on health care, so why wouldn't they spend it. On the other hand many health outcomes may also depend on wealth - for example over-consumption leading to obesity, which might affect health more than spending on health care can compensate. In that example, a rich country could spend more money on health care and still have worse average health than poorer countries. Not saying that is exactly what is going on, just that it makes sense to be careful with judging.
- afarrell 7y ago
  From data collected over 2014-2018, the US spent $10,586 USD/capita on healthcare and Sweden spent $5,447 USD/capita on healthcare. Source: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
  - adventskalender 7y ago
    That may be so, but doesn't necessarily imply that health care is more expensive in the US. It's possible that in the US they simply spend more money on useless things, or do more screenings with better technology, for example. Many things can go wrong with interpreting such statistics, see also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21760725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21760725 Afaik, some of the best (and also most expensive) medical procedures are only available in the US.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>At the college I teach at it is clear that we are marketing to students who should not be going to college and shouldn't realistically expect to get a degree. It seems like almost all 4yr colleges do this to some extent nowadays. Freshman lecture halls with 500+ students and one adjunct faculty ratio are a money maker. Capstone classes with 40 students and one tenured professor are a money loser. You'd have to hire really bad bean counters to miss the obvious way to exploit that situation for monetary gain.
rayiner 7y ago
Why is the cost of living relevant when you’re talking about debt levels? The point is simply that our debt levels aren’t that unmanageable, and we could achieve something very close to the Swedish student loan system by simply automatically enrolling people in repayment plans we already have. Moreover, American cost of living is the same in Sweden as in the US (the GDP per capita in nominal dollars is identical to the figure in purchasing-power-adjusted dollars). You may need a car, but housing is cheaper in most of the country. As to healthcare, making comparisons is difficult. 2/3 of college graduates have employer subsidized healthcare. For those people, you need to look at the median employee premium portion, which is $2,200/year. (There are also out-of-pocket costs, mostly for drugs, but the US figure of about $1,000 is not much different than the Swedish figure of $800 on that front). The employee premium paid by the typical college graduate is much less than the extra taxes that same person would pay in Sweden. The median college graduate earns $51,000 in the US to start. The median employee premium of $2,200 is 4.4% of that. The tax differential is almost certainly higher than that. (In Sweden, all of that is taxed at 30% county tax, no federal. In the US, the first $12,000 is tax free, and the rest is taxed at 10-12% federal, plus maybe 4-5% state and local, plus 7.65% FICA).
- sykick 7y ago
  You wrote: The point is simply that our debt levels aren’t that unmanageable,... The cost of living is important as this and income level determines the affordability of debt. Just comparing income level and debt level between the two countries is not a deep enough analysis in order to determine if your proposed fix would work. You are also ignoring the fact that a large number of people who go to college never graduate. These people are completely absent from your analysis of the problem. You are focusing only on the set of college graduates of both countries. I suspect that the rate of college completion for those who enroll at least one semester is much higher in Sweden than in the U.S. According to your post 1/3 of U.S. college graduates don't have employer subsidized healthcare. This is a huge percentage and you are ignoring them in your analysis of relative debt burden. Taxes are higher as a percent in Sweden than in the U.S. but in the U.S. at a moment's notice you can get screwed financially really bad in ways that you can't in Sweden. An ambulance ride in the U.S. costs much more than in Sweden and yearly out of pocket expenses for healthcare is much higher. The necessity of a car causes most people in the U.S. to have auto loans and unplanned maintenance costs can send people over the financial precipice. I suggest that merely looking at the numbers you have does not give a clear picture of the relative situation in both countries.

by sykick 7y ago

Mirioron 7y ago

Why would transportation costs be higher in the US? Gasoline is two times cheaper in the US than in Sweden. Food is roughly the same price, depending of what you eat.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
Cars are required in most cities in the US to hold a job due to lack of public transportation. Cars are required in most rural areas in the US because there is no other way around.
- Izkata 7y ago
  On that second point, a perspective note for non-US people who don't realize: Sweden has about the same geographic area as just California. Only covers about 5% of the whole contiguous US.
  - ryannevius 7y ago
    Size comparison, for reference: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM4NDAyOTc.MTA5MjczODQ*OTIzNTYwNg(MjkwNzQ4MQ~!SE*ODMzOTUzNg.MTQ1MDk0MzI)Mw https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTM4NDAyOTc.MTA5MjczODQ...
  - Gwypaas 7y ago
    And there's 40 million people in California compared to 10 million in Sweden. So comparatively California is a densely populated mecca.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Transportation costs for most individuals are related to density at a city level, not a nation level, so I don’t see the relevance of comparing density of a nation.
sykick 7y ago
Public transportation is very bad in the U.S. Even in major cities. For the vast majority of people a car is a necessity in the U.S. Most Americans end up in debt to buy a car. Then there is insurance and the opportunity cost of the government having to spend a great deal of money on road maintenance that could otherwise be spent on things like education.
- treden 7y ago
  European cities have much higher population density, and the lower personal income (often via higher taxes and, ironically, worker protection laws) changes the tradeoff between driving and taking pub trans, so more people take the bus. The tradeoff is that a lot of people live in small boxes. And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too. Would be nice to have some data. One related observation, that seems less surprising the longer I live here, is that europe has no spacex, google, tesla, nasa, coherent mars rovers, the list goes on... if you give people stuff, they're mostly just afraid someone's going to take it away. But yeah, to echo someone else's comment, I'd rather be poor, or even average, in Europe. I guess being super wealthy here wouldn't be that bad either, since nobody's nipping at your heels.
  - reallydontask 7y ago
    > And european governments have plenty of bs job creation engines like roadwork, too. Do you really think that there isn't economic value in roadworks?
    - dillonmckay 7y ago
      US BS job creation is in healthcare, particularly insurance processing and billing, not roads.
      - sschueller 7y ago
        Printing paper checks in the 21st century....

adventskalender 7y ago

But taxes are much lower in the US. Is healthcare even cheaper in Sweden, if you figure in taxes?

Gibbon1 7y ago
Scuttlebutt is actual healthcare expenditures in places like Sweden are about half that in the US.
- adventskalender 7y ago
  I find such figures difficult to interpret, though (like here: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-average-wealthy-countries-spend-half-much-per-person-health-u-s-spends https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...) It could be that richer countries simply have more money to spend on health care, so why wouldn't they spend it. On the other hand many health outcomes may also depend on wealth - for example over-consumption leading to obesity, which might affect health more than spending on health care can compensate. In that example, a rich country could spend more money on health care and still have worse average health than poorer countries. Not saying that is exactly what is going on, just that it makes sense to be careful with judging.
afarrell 7y ago
From data collected over 2014-2018, the US spent $10,586 USD/capita on healthcare and Sweden spent $5,447 USD/capita on healthcare. Source: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
- adventskalender 7y ago
  That may be so, but doesn't necessarily imply that health care is more expensive in the US. It's possible that in the US they simply spend more money on useless things, or do more screenings with better technology, for example. Many things can go wrong with interpreting such statistics, see also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21760725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21760725 Afaik, some of the best (and also most expensive) medical procedures are only available in the US.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>At the college I teach at it is clear that we are marketing to students who should not be going to college and shouldn't realistically expect to get a degree. It seems like almost all 4yr colleges do this to some extent nowadays. Freshman lecture halls with 500+ students and one adjunct faculty ratio are a money maker. Capstone classes with 40 students and one tenured professor are a money loser. You'd have to hire really bad bean counters to miss the obvious way to exploit that situation for monetary gain.

rayiner 7y ago

Why is the cost of living relevant when you’re talking about debt levels? The point is simply that our debt levels aren’t that unmanageable, and we could achieve something very close to the Swedish student loan system by simply automatically enrolling people in repayment plans we already have. Moreover, American cost of living is the same in Sweden as in the US (the GDP per capita in nominal dollars is identical to the figure in purchasing-power-adjusted dollars). You may need a car, but housing is cheaper in most of the country. As to healthcare, making comparisons is difficult. 2/3 of college graduates have employer subsidized healthcare. For those people, you need to look at the median employee premium portion, which is $2,200/year. (There are also out-of-pocket costs, mostly for drugs, but the US figure of about $1,000 is not much different than the Swedish figure of $800 on that front). The employee premium paid by the typical college graduate is much less than the extra taxes that same person would pay in Sweden. The median college graduate earns $51,000 in the US to start. The median employee premium of $2,200 is 4.4% of that. The tax differential is almost certainly higher than that. (In Sweden, all of that is taxed at 30% county tax, no federal. In the US, the first $12,000 is tax free, and the rest is taxed at 10-12% federal, plus maybe 4-5% state and local, plus 7.65% FICA).

sykick 7y ago
You wrote: The point is simply that our debt levels aren’t that unmanageable,... The cost of living is important as this and income level determines the affordability of debt. Just comparing income level and debt level between the two countries is not a deep enough analysis in order to determine if your proposed fix would work. You are also ignoring the fact that a large number of people who go to college never graduate. These people are completely absent from your analysis of the problem. You are focusing only on the set of college graduates of both countries. I suspect that the rate of college completion for those who enroll at least one semester is much higher in Sweden than in the U.S. According to your post 1/3 of U.S. college graduates don't have employer subsidized healthcare. This is a huge percentage and you are ignoring them in your analysis of relative debt burden. Taxes are higher as a percent in Sweden than in the U.S. but in the U.S. at a moment's notice you can get screwed financially really bad in ways that you can't in Sweden. An ambulance ride in the U.S. costs much more than in Sweden and yearly out of pocket expenses for healthcare is much higher. The necessity of a car causes most people in the U.S. to have auto loans and unplanned maintenance costs can send people over the financial precipice. I suggest that merely looking at the numbers you have does not give a clear picture of the relative situation in both countries.