In Germany, health insurance is also tied to your employer. If you're a freelancer in Germany you pay out of your own pocket every month (around 500 bucks).
It's a very similar system, the real difference is that it's illegal to not have insurance, so you are "forced" to always be insured, and unemployment support is more generous.
They are either included in your insurance (if you are employed and have public health insurance), or you'd have to add them to the insurance at extra cost, if you have private health insurance (for example freelancer).
I have no problem believing that other nations governments do a great job. I also do not live there nor am I a citizen of those countries.
American government is a uniquely incompetent form of government. Despite being one of the largest & most expensive governments it gets little to nothing done. Anything that is 'done' is often done far over the original projected budget.
> American government is a uniquely incompetent form of government.
Objectively untrue by any serious metric you'd like to go for, and in particular government-run health insurance programs (Medicare chief among them, but also the VA) are notably well-run and have low incidence of fraud while maintaining remarkably low overhead.
It's interesting to me that you're lumping together Medicare and the VA. Because while I here almost nothing but positive things about Medicare, I hear lots of stories of people not getting the care they need from the VA (and "slipping through the cracks"). Granted, those seem to be mostly older anecdotes, have things changed in the past decade or so?
You're conflating things like physical infrastructure and defense contracts with welfare. The welfare that we do give, for the most part, is exceptionally well run and effective.
Because giving individuals money, targeted or otherwise, is given/spent to enhance an individual or families life in some way. It is a direct benefit to them.
And yes, SS is absolutely welfare and it is extremely effective. It reduces the poverty rate of the elderly by nearly 30%. It also reduces, directly and indirectly, child and young adult poverty by meaningful amounts as well, 1.5% and 3% respectively.
Regarding your first point, I disagree. I think the intention is clearly to provide a direct benefit, but that isn’t always the effect. One example which seems to be entering the zeitgeist now is student aid. The presence of additional student aid has a high correlation with the rise in tuition over time, but I think we’d all struggle to say it was commensurate with to the cost.
Addressing your second point re: social security and perhaps generalizing my first point slightly, I think the statistics you cite are reductions in poverty vs simply abolishing the benefit. I don’t think they measure the counterfactual scenario of there never having been social security to begin with, and those current seniors having had their take home pay increase by some portion of the 15% of their gross pay which otherwise went to SS. Additionally, it doesn’t take into account the future debt servicing cost of current SS recipients on future generations.
As to your point about SS, you are right, but the counterfactuals have been measured. We didn't have SS in this country for the majority of its history and elder poverty was terrible prior to its existence, reaching well over 40% in the 1920's.
SS also has always been a Pay Go system and doesn't have any debt servicing, actually the reverse is true, SS is owed money from the US government. That is, SS lent the US government money. That government debt would exist with or without SS as federal government spending is not constrained in any way by tax receipts, so SS's impact here is moot.
To your point about student aid, that is far more complicated. While it is likely true that the existence of the aid has resulted in some upward pressure on tuition, it is not the only factor. Increased demand both in quantity and quality of services, reduction in direct public aid to institutions, and increasing administrative costs among other things all play a part. Without student aid, it is likely true that prices would be lower, but probably not nearly as much as one would assume, and we would have a far less educated populace. The latter being a substantial negative in a world where the best paying work is and continues to be more knowledge based.
