> So having medical insurance or not determines whether or not a country is a failed state?
If a public health crisis triggers a statistically significant percentage of the population to face bankruptcy due to the inability of it's state to face their most pressing needs then the answer is yes.
I remember reading an interesting premise about 5 years ago, that the U.S. was rotting from the bottom up and it just took longer for higher social classes to recognize it. If you were poor and black the U.S. was always a failed state. If you were a factory worker you started noticing it in the 1970s, and then it accelerated with Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound " in the 90s. The former middle class started realizing it with the financial crisis in '09, which knocked many of them out of the middle class. In the last couple years many of my friends (who went to an elite college and all have professional jobs) have started realizing it. Coronavirus probably finally exposed the wealthy to it.
I think it's actually going to get worse before it gets better. Right now we're just a failing state, give it a year or two and we're likely to be a failed state. Then we get to see what emerges from the ashes, but the process of getting there probably won't be pretty.
“The illegal immigrant population of the United States peaked by 2007, when it was at 12.2 million and 4% of the total U.S. population. Estimates in 2016 put the number of unauthorized immigrants at 10.7 million, representing 3.3% of the total U.S. population. Since the Great Recession, more illegal immigrants have left the United States than entered it, and illegal border crossings are at the lowest in decades. Since 2007, visa overstays have accounted for a larger share of the growth in the illegal immigrant population than illegal border crossings, which have declined considerably from 2000 to 2018. In 2012, 52% of unauthorized immigrants were from Mexico, 15% from Central America, 12% from Asia, 6% from South America, 5% from the Caribbean, and another 5% from Europe and Canada. As of 2016, approximately two-thirds of unauthorized adult immigrants had lived in the U.S. for at least a decade.”
Those use the Pew numbers, which are known to be bogus because their inflow numbers come from a study that counted only working-age males, and their outflow numbers count everybody, even infants. The true net (through 2016) has always increased, even during the Great Recession.
According to Census demographic trends, in the next couple decades, half of America’s population will live in just eight states. The half that is whiter, older, more rural, and more conservative, will be spread across the other 42 states. That’s 84 senators for them, and 16 senators for the other half of America- This is why.
Those eight states can enact state legislation to provide those benefits, no? That's how Canada arrived at universal healthcare: provinces started these programs as experiments.
Not saying the current system of representation doesn't have issues, but there are ways to hack around it to deliver progressive policies in the population centers most will be living in.
This is a fantastic point. Less representation on a national level perhaps, but maybe the federal government will have to become much smaller in the future. I personally don't think that's a bad thing.
I'm going to go the other way and say that white, older, rural, conservative Americans care about child care as much as anyone else. And if anything, older Americans have a habit of donating their time for free child care.
How many citizens have lost their health insurance in the US and the EU?
How many citizens, in the IS and the EU, will claim bankruptcy from medical bills in the next 12 months?