Social Welfare Around the World

This week I am painting with much broader strokes.  While I have focused a lot on the programs in the United States, I am turning to look at the outside world and see how they handle the age old question of how much should the government help the needy and what form that help should take.

We’ll start with healthcare:

Worldwide, there are 25 countries that offer universal healthcare, 33 if you include those that simply have an insurance mandate (like the United States under the Affordable Care Act).

The majority function as a single-payer system.  The oldest of these systems is in Norway, which was set up in 1912.  The most recent, in Iceland, was started in 1990.  In this scenario the citizens pay taxes and those taxes pay for their healthcare.  All they need to do is walk into the hospital or doctor’s office and they receive care.  This is something that many Democrats have said they would like to support, a recent and notable example being Senator Bernie Sanders.

Many of the politicians who say they would support such a system also agree that it is not something that would be likely to be passed in the United States any time in the near future without a major shift in public opinion.  In part a big piece of this problem is that the public equates socialism and communism.  All an opponent has to do to bring the public in against a movement towards a single-payer system is to call it socialized medicine (which it is), and people immediately turn against it.

The two-tier system used in the other nine countries is very similar to single-payer system.  It is, however a bit more moderate and some of the countries once had a single-payer system (Canada is a recent example of this).  In the two-tier system, taxes are paid that makes healthcare available to anyone who wants it.  The difference is that there is also the option of getting private health insurance if you would like to pay for it yourself.

In the United States this would still be a pretty liberal plan (because it provides government funded healthcare to everyone) but is moving more towards the center because it leaves the choice of government care and private insurance up to the individual.  I was unable to find an example of a politician in the United States openly supporting a two-tier system but there were plenty of articles from economists and news sources alike saying that Canada’s recent transition will be a good thing and something they will come to regret.  I suppose only time will tell.

Next up is education around the world:

In many countries a primary education is offered for free.  The United States offers up through twelfth grade as public education with an option of paying for private school yourself.  However, there are fewer that offer college for free.  Most of the countries that offer free college are in Europe, but there are a few examples elsewhere, like Brazil and Sri Lanka.

Germany recently made the transition to offering a tuition free university education (in 2014), even for people from other countries.  Meaning a student from the United States or India or anywhere else in the world can go to a German university free of charge so long as they are accepted.

In the United Kingdom the system is not free, but the maximum for tuition and fees is set by the government instead of the universities themselves.  As of 2009 that maximum was set at £9,000, about $13,000, per year for citizens and for people from other countries the fees are between £10,000 and £30,000 ($14,000 – $43,000) for undergraduate degrees, depending on the institution.

Free education is something that Senator Bernie Sanders is also fighting for in his current presidential campaign.  The conservatives however insist that this form of education is not feasible for the United States because it would require a massive tax hike, and increase the countries deficit which is already quite high.  A system where the government pays for or controls the higher education system inevitably falls into the same pitfall that a single-payer healthcare system falls into: it is a socialist plan which many in the United States equate with communism.

Next is retirement programs:

This is an area where the United States is part of the pack.  Most first world countries offer some form of government administered retirement benefits.  In the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada the system is basically the exact same with some slight differences in the eligible age and the amount paid.  The biggest difference is that many countries encourage corporate pensions to supplement the pay of the government funded plans.  In the United States corporate pensions are becoming less common, instead focusing on private retirement accounts that the employers frequently match payments to.

This is one of the few social welfare programs where the United States matches the rest of the world government wise.  Many countries are even looking at the same questions of raising the retirement age.  Most have the official retirement age is in the mid 60’s and are starting to move to the late 60’s (specifically most of the countries seem to be moving the retirement age to 67 over the next ten years or so).

All in all, the United States is significantly more conservative than the rest of the developed world (at least in terms of the programs we’ve discussed).  This seems to be about par for the course for our country.  In terms of social policy, the American Dream would kind of lend itself towards wanting to provide less assistance to the poor, and less government intervention.  To many in our country, everyone has the ability to go as far as their talents will take them.  It is because of this that people are economically conservative.  They feel like people have the opportunity to help themselves and that it isn’t the government’s job to help them.  That isn’t to say that the public isn’t starting to trend towards the liberal side, but as it stands the country tends to be more conservative.