Nikki Haley, former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is currently getting a beautiful lesson in social democracy and the quality of life in Finland. In response to Haley’s claim that healthcare in the United States is far superior to healthcare in Finland, people in Finland—who have internet access as well as very good health care—are helpfully telling her about what it’s actually like when your ability to pay has nothing to do with getting good medical care.
For reasons that I cannot fully understand, Haley left a scathing reply to a two-week old Bernie Sanders tweet that lauded the low cost of child birth in Finland as compared to the United States.
“Alright @BernieSanders, you’re not the woman having the baby so I wouldn’t be out there talking about skimping on a woman when it comes to childbirth,” Haley wrote. “Trust me! Nice try though.”
She followed up with: “Health care costs are too high that is true but comparing us to Finland is ridiculous. Ask them how their health care is. You won’t like the answer.”
It’s unclear what Haley expected in response, but it was maybe not a swarm of Finnish people entering her mentions to inform her that, actually, Finland’s healthcare is ranked one of the best on the planet.
About that Finnish maternity care:
Heart surgery is cheap too, apparently:
It seems like a lot of Finnish people are, in fact, very fucking satisfied with their health care services:
Even Kai Sauer, the Finnish representative at the United Nations, took some time to school Haley:
Sauer followed up by adding that Finland has the world’s third lowest infant mortality rate, the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world (the United States ranks worst of all developed countries), and the lowest cancer mortality rate in the European Union. For good measure, Sauer noted that Finland has recently been ranked as the happiest country in the world; the United States is the 19th happiest.
Meanwhile, in America:
Top notch health care system! Right, Haley?
DISCUSSION
when rich people hear that we want everyone to get equal access to healthcare, they naturally assume that means they’ll have to suffer the way we do, because they know that their extreme wealth depends fundamentally on our poverty