Taxes in Norway:

[applegrove]

— Blue Axeman (@blueaxeman.bsky.social) 2026-02-20T20:09:04.062Z

[surfered]

1. And to compare apples to apples, they don't spend $1 trillion a year on their military

[Uncle Joe]

4. Most of every advanced nation on Earth has some form of universal healthcare, even Russia and China.

[Melon]

8. To be fair, their population is the size of Dallas...

But we spend too much.

[paleotn]

12. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much. The bigger the risk pool....

the cheaper the insurance, since there's more people to spread the risk over. Universal healthcare is still insurance. It's just the risk pool is everyone vs. the vastly smaller risk pool UnitedHealthcare and Cigna work with. If one person gets a cancer diagnosis and expensive treatment, that's going to be damn expensive for everyone if the risk pool is only 10 people having to pay that cost in their premiums. If it's 1 cancer diagnosis for every 250K people, that's more manageable. And you can't get more manageable than a risk pool that includes everyone in the country.

Then there's the paperwork. Compare the claim processing headcount at a large Canadian hospital to an equally sized one in the US. We have whole departments. Floors of people managing paperwork for Medicare, Medicaid, some VA, and a host of private insurers. All with their particular quirks. In Canada, it's a small fraction. The inefficiencies, read cost, in the US system is staggering. And monumentally stupid...unless you're a UnitedHealthcare C suite parasite. Then it's fabulous just for them. Not anyone else.

[Gordcanuck]

14. In Canada we have another advantage

in our “socialized” hospital system. Major new diagnostic equipment , its installation expense, operating alterations, etc. not involved in the initial structure of the hospital are covered by donations from the community. Not from the provincial government, which has overall jurisdiction, but by us the users. And we are generous, knowing the administration soliciting the project funds Is after all, accountable to us.
I am alive today because of a major high tech operating system for heart surgery paid for mostly by donations from a spectrum of big and small contributors which placed three stents in clogged arteries. My bill was zero, my donations thereafter are continuing. And they are tax-deductible.
Gordcanuck🇨🇦

[Submariner]

2. Yeahhh.....but we have a Spealker of the House

who can school the Pope on the true maga-meaning of the Bible, all while jerking off with his son to "Young girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. So take that you woke reindeer herders.

[patphil]

10. My first try at a reply was just too stupid to let stand.

I give up.

[peppertree]

18. The best gummint money can buy!

[JMCKUSICK]

3. Experiencing this phenomena first hand,

I couldn't have said it better.

[PatrickforB]

11. Yes, I hope things are going OK for you. Our healthcare system in this country sucks and the only reason we

have this crappy rationed healthcare with financially crippling copays is because of the Wall Street greed lizards, billionaire tax cuts and bloated military spending. We need to REMOVE the profit motive from healthcare, and get rid of the insurance company bean counters.

Conflicting interests:
Patient wants the care they need.

Doctors, nurses and other direct healthcare people want to provide patients the care they need.

The business and finance people in the healthcare system want to charge the maximum and not provide anything deemed 'unnecessary' by the beancounters so they keep profits/retained earnings up.

The insurance companies want to boost PROFITS by denying claims and raising premiums (+19.2% for my HMO)

And at the same time we have these billionaire dirtbags who are probably ALL in the Epstein files flipping American working people a giant middle finger thinking they can rape and kill children for kicks and then get away with it.

Anyway, I wish you the best!

[JMCKUSICK]

13. Thank you PatrickforB,

It so happens that tomorrow is the first anniversary of my Zipper Club membership, which I was only eligible for because of Medicaid and my every 6 month check ups that allowed this situation to be discovered before I dropped dead.

(I had a quadruple bypass Feb 21, 2025.)

[Beartracks]

16. Wow. Happy Anniversary!

So glad you're here.

==============

[ffr]

5. Yeah, but, you probably don't show how proud your are by dragging 100 flags around in the back of your pickup.

So there! 'murican Freedom!

[Picaro]

6. Strongly recommended

The math is inescapable. It is glaringly obvious.

Back in 1999 when I was a global account
manager for a leading technology firm I was in the London office.

A senior account manager I’d met who had gone to all the right schools and was clearly upper class was expounding on how we Yanks had gotten everything right. Specifically he was talking about employment at will.

He went on and on about how the proles were lazy and generally worthless and were all on the dole.

I listened and then asked him a single question, “If our system is so much better then why not emigrate to the US?”.

The horror on his face surprised me. The answer he gave me surprised me even more.

He told me that he would never emigrate to the US because of our healthcare system.

He suddenly sounded quite liberal.

He pointed out that the US is the only developed nation where medical bankruptcies are common.

He said, “There’s no doubt that I’ll get old and sick. In your system you have no choice, but spend everything you’ve amassed throughout your life to pay for the illnesses you will inevitably develop. Until there’s nothing left. In my system I can pay for private healthcare. But if it is
going to drain me I can go to NHS and pay little or nothing and keep my wealth. Your system guarantees ruination.”

Most of our fellow citizens have never traveled overseas and don’t have any knowledge of what another healthcare system looks like. So they believe the lies the Republicans tell about all these lazy black and brown people who just want free healthcare.

Love to see a cogent explanation like this from someone that lives it.

We could have nice things if only we could stomp out the lies.

[KPN]

19. Yep -- in some respects, we are the worst or the worst -- seems like many respects more and more these days.

[Glaisne]

7. The standard depraved conservative response

To paying higher taxes for those things is “I don’t want to pay for someone else’s healthcare”, etc. Disgusting people.

[Joinfortmill]

15. Yup. Wake up, America.

[BaronChocula]

17. Reagan is called transformational

as if it's a good thing. He blamed a welfare queen (black women) for stealing hardworking (white) people's money through the taxes they paid. He used that hatred to cut taxes for rich people and services for everyone else. And now no one wants to pay for anything. Forty-five years after Reagan we're cutting science and research. What a great transformation!

Check out how the tax rate for the highest bracket has dropped over time.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=jm6o

[ShazzieB]

20. ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️ THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️