Typical bought-Congress bill that sounds better in the headlines than it actually is.
Passed last year 2022 but doesn’t take effect until 4 years later, 2026. And only for just 10 drugs that year. Only 30 more total for 2026 to 2027. And these negotiated price drugs cannot be newer drugs - they are only negotiable if they’ve been marketed 9 whole years first without any generic competition.
Yeah, the already-effective $35 insulin cap, and the 2025 $2000 max out-of-pocket are legit improvements for USA but still are laughably bad compared to most of the developed world and an increasing amount of the highly developing world.
This bill was just enough to make the Democrats (for whom I vote, given the alternative), AARP, and other rich players crow about how much good they’ve done in this issue, fundraise on it, ignore fixing it further, and leave us seniors in a still-unaffordable situation. Just slightly less unaffordable.
Definitely. I spent several years living in a South American country, one that is considered almost “high income” for the region. Uruguay. Now back in the States I still recognize how much less we USA folks could live on if our society was not so pushed by constant consumption by the corporatocracy’s propaganda.
Learning to think in another language. Learning how even everyday things like doors and locks are different. Feeling distant from yet also slowly growing into that new to me culture
Smaller space, more use of renewables for heat, cooking, electric generation. Smaller cars than the giants on US roads that everybody here seems to “need”. Yet many of those very small cars are indeed USA street legal if Hyundai/KIA, GM, etc imported the Brasil-Made Chevrolet Onyx, the Argentina-made small Chevrolets, the South American KIA Picanto, VW “city car” the Volkswagen Up! (Already on EU streets in an even smaller version)
Grocery stores with more home made and store made products. Yet without the massive duplication we have of entire aisles of breakfast cereals, soaps, etc. There was a reasonably broad degree of consumer choices but not the overwhelming and ridiculous amount here.
People shopping in small amounts for what they need that day. Rather than huge hauls from Costco?
And the universal and affordable healthcare. Which was not the single-payer free-at-service nonsense that some US politicians claim everywhere in the world’ has. (Dear Bernie, NOBODY in the world has that!) Paid out of your local social security tax equivalent if employed, or about $60 US per month to buy into it if neither employed nor on benefits. Small “ticket charges” for physicians, labs, imaging, and about a $40 US ticket charge for the hospital ER. ZERO charge for hospital stay and all labs, tests, etc during that stay.
Mandatory voting with real competing parties and coalitions of parties. Military used almost only for UN peacekeeping.
There were frustrating times, and I personally had family reasons to return. But I still miss it, and sometimes envy those of my Uruguayan friends who could afford to travel to the US and my US friends that could afford homes in Uruguay while keeping a home also in the US.
One learns in ones bones that the US way is not the only way.