Blog 9 Week 9

The article this week, "As good as it gets?" by Mike Edwards of AARP magazine I found to be interesting enough to focus my second to last post on.


The article focuses on the Dutch, and their retirement years.   All in all, a Dutch couple can receive almost $45,000 per year after the age of 65.  To my surprise, this is less that an American couple can receive on social security, though 100% of Dutch citizens have government insurance for medical and home nursing care.  Approximately 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all.  The Dutch also pay little to no copayments for prescription drugs, while many Americans have to pay out of pocket for prescription drugs. 


The main quote in this article which I found to be of particular importance "the European attitude is, we're all in this together and sooner or later we're all going to become older and need some help.  The U.S. attitude is, we're all rugged individualists and we're going to take care of ourselves, not others."


A good question I wondered the answer to is "how do the euros stretch further than our dollars?"  According to a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, we pay a lot more than others for the same stuff.  Costs for hospitals, drugs and physicians services can be up to 50% more expensive in the U.S. and our status of health isn't necessarily better than theirs.


It looks like the costs aren't going down for the Dutch, nor the Swedes.  Even a single family of two that has an income of about 60,000 still is in the 25% tax bracket, and more than 50% of those taxes goes toward the universal pension fund.  Currently, there is a 12% tax on food and as much as 40% on new cars.  Since it seems that very few complain about what they have to live on, the taxes are probably a fair deduction from their day to day living expenses.  Especially since the health care is almost 100% covered (at least for important/non cosmetic procedures).  The really jeopardy for retirement benefits will be the people living and willing to pay for it, especially as birth rates decline across western Europe.