It shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security. The US’s primary concern is mark to market in pension funds.
I seem to recall John Cleese or some other british person suggesting that the NHS was a given after so many had been through ww2. Wikipedia[1] on the NHS suggests the same, through quotes by politicians.
A historical aside, the reason private health insurance was created in the US was World War 2.
I could be misremembering pieces, but the long and short of it was that salary compensation was capped/restricted during World War 2 and so companies began offering benefits outside of salary, private health insurance among them, to retain their employees.
> shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security
I forgot about the world-class healthcare the populations of Africa, the Middle East and the war-ravaged parts of Asia enjoy.
I agree there is probably a link between war and healthcare. But the link flows through civic pride and identity, and population-wide familiarity with the horrors of war, more than it does from any sense of military preparedness. (That said, I've never seen an American politician try to sell universal healthcare as a national security imperative. Hmm...)
> Uncomfortable with the crowd, Consul Shepherd turned to the Icelandic police. "Would you mind ... getting the crowd to stand back a bit, so that the soldiers can get off the destroyer?" he asked. "Certainly," came the reply.
> One Icelander snatched a rifle from a marine and stuffed a cigarette in it. He then threw it back to the marine and told him to be careful with it. An officer arrived to scold the marine.
I don’t know if your history books are correct… in WWII, Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany and Finland was even allied with them against the Soviet Union before the Soviets forced Finland to drive the Nazis out of the country.
Admittedly not a ground war, but that's not entirely true:
> In total, there were 97 air attacks on northern Australia, though air reconnaissance was carried out over the region by Axis Powers through much of 1944.
> German and Japanese surface raiders and submarines operated in New Zealand waters on several occasions in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1945, sinking a total of four ships while Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew over Auckland and Wellington preparing for a projected Japanese invasion of New Zealand.
For instance, Canada, which also arguably "never had a world war on the continent" has public healthcare. What gives? What about all the central/south american countries that don't have public healthcare?
