@Aurelius710, @Soupe du jour

Thank you for your long answers! I am sure there are much good in the USA as well. I have visited and I liked it very well. People were nice and friendly, but what is so difficult for me to understand is that, as far as I have understood it, they call European societies for communist countries, because of the extra "sick" tax (the collective insurance) on top of the ordinary tax.

May be it has to do with Christendom in the origin. I mean many European people run from Europe because of the Catholic Church in some way or other was the dominant force before the reformation. People of other beliefs like followers of Jan Hus were forbidden to live according to their believes. These people and others fled to America to practice their faith. On the other hand there were uprisings here and there in France and in Spain, among others, from atheists (leftists) who wanted to get rid of Christendom.

I think that perhaps old views of Europe may have been delivered from one generation to the next, not necessarily as conscious stories, but as "something scary" the family once fled from ... America was the land where everything was possible if one worked hard enough ...

I shall not try to be a historian, which I am not, but when I was a child, we saw USA as a kind "big-brother". A relative of mine who was sick after WWII got packets through the Marshall plan, with among others chocolate that was not possible to buy in the stores at that time. Then we grew up and found out about the difference in health insurances (only by work places) in USA and our collective insurances in parts of Europe. I was hurt in a traffic accident as a child and there was no questions about if we had paid our health tax. My husband had free hospital for a surgery as a child. Since we grow up with it, of course we were shocked when we learned about how it was in the USA.

I think I do understand about the "two party system" in USA. Rich people will not have to pay for the health trouble of those not working hard enough.

Everything isn't OK in Europe and never was, but at least most of the European countries have some sort of "free health guarantee".

For this forum that should be of interest because many with Mental Disorders are not able to work. I was in another American forum once and remember a person with psychoses that was out of medication from the end of the Summer into far out in the Autumn. He suffered much! That would not have been possible were I live.

To sum it up, I do believe that there are many great "things" in USA (as well as in Europe), but I think that our system, with regard to who shall pay for health issues, is better.

For the time being we struggle in Europe (some countries more then others) because of the war in Ukraine and the stop of cheap gas from Russia (as is an European sanction against Russia). So what will happen in the future if this war continues for a long time, nobody knows. There are fewer young persons now than before (because of low birth rates), and that means fewer working people to pay for our Welfare Benefits.

PS. It is really difficult to write about something so complex at a few lines and to make it meaningful. DS.