Norway calls United States underdeveloped:

[tblue37]

Link to tweet

[markie]

1. true

[uponit7771]

2. We are, democratically we are

[Wingus Dingus]

3. You know, I am down on many facets of American life, because we can

and must do better. But I disagree that we have "poorly developed health services and infrastructure". That's just fucking dumb. Edit to add: The US has some of the best and most advanced health care in the world, it's universal access and affordability that's the issue--but no student from Norway is going to be denied health care.

[WarGamer]

6. But that's just it...

How many people, what percentage of the population can receive care at City of Hope, Sloan Kettering or Mayo Clinic?

1/2?

[barbtries]

7. that's true,

and if they need extensive care, they'll likely be saddled with lifelong debt, because capitalism trumps equity and humanity. this does not apply in other developed nations.

[Jerry2144]

8. but it is true

What is dumb is how the Repugnant Party blocks all investment in clean energy, public transportation, publish utilities/communications, public education, etc. What is also very dumb is how they block anything to make health care affordable for the average person. We may have some of the greatest hospitals, medical technologies, and research in the world, but most people cannot afford to use those. Private health insurance is a joke how much it still costs out of pocket for child birth, a mild heart attack, car crash, or numerous other things.

We would truly be the greatest nation on earth if we would become a social democracy like much of Europe, Canada, Japan/Korea. We're getting there. The first signs of it is coming when you see the latest data showing church membership is less than 50%. Get it down to less than 30% like Europe and get the "Christian" Repugnants out of office from county park dog-poop picker-upper all the way up to DC.

[Hekate]

10. We can't be bothered to ensure health care delivery to all our citizens. Great health care, but only

...if you have the money. That would be an infrastructure problem, all right.

American providers can claim their personal sense of morality and religion are reason enough to turn away patients if they are female (Horrors, you want Plan B? Or birth control pills? Don’t you know such prescriptions lead straight to abortion? Which you can’t have, you slut. ) So only female students from Norway need to worry.

[Hugin]

12. +1

I could add an encyclopedia of other ways the for-profit health care system in the US has failed the people who both serve it as practitioners and are under served as patients.

But, we'll start with yours for now.

[Hekate]

13. I went on for another few paragraphs, but decided that was enough for now

[Celerity]

16. +2

[hunter]

36. Even people with money can receive absurdly expensive but utterly inappropriate health care.

By the raw numbers, in terms of outcomes, medicine in the U.S.A. is not that "great" even when you exclude people who have limited or no access to healthcare.

A generic medicine or treatment might be superior to the latest and "greatest" medicine but there's nobody pushing that.

Most U.S. health insurance companies don't really care about controlling costs. Instead they seem more concerned about the size of their revenue streams.

It's possible to receive better care at a homeless clinic than some swank Beverly Hills medical group.

[Hekate]

44. Our last few insurance companies (employer plan) have grown increasingly insistent about generics

Up to a point, I agree. And that point is when a generic is not as effective — per our doctor (one of my husband’s meds to control ulcerative colitis), or when the patient attests that the side effects are a freaking nightmare (I take an anti-depressant, and the generic gave me rolling panic attacks every day because the base med was off copyright, but the time-release was not so the manufacturer just threw in something that released half the anti-depressant within the first few hours). Originally we really had to jump through hoops to get an exception, but this year it looks like we won’t. We pay up our deductible pretty fast, though.

That said, I agree that the drug companies and health insurance companies play games hand in hand. The insurance companies have plenty of clout — they could bring prices under better control if they wanted to. The fact that they do not tells me that if my low income friend had some of the conditions we have, she could just die for all they care.

[AllyCat]

15. What? They won't be denied care but their families

will be on the hook for the astronomical bill. We are an underdeveloped country that does not afford access to our modern healthcare system because money is more important than taking care of people.

[Wingus Dingus]

26. Read all the replies, and while I agree with many of the points made,

I still stand by my post. Our health insurance situation sucks, we need universal health care, but Norway's making quite the overstatement here--people from other countries who visit and travel here need not fear our health care system (provided they have health travel insurance or some other provision from their home countries to aid in payment). They do need to fear our mass shooting incidents, on the other hand.

[mtngirl47]

4. Truth hurts. n/t

[barbtries]

5. they aren't lying.

we're back assward. We shouldn't be, but republicans.

[secondwind]

9. We are! Sadly

[taxi]

11. I suppose any Norwegian would say the same after crossing the Baltic Sea. nt

[Celerity]

21. Norway doesn't lie on the Baltic. I live on a coast of it (Stockholm).

The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, northeast Germany, Poland, Russia and the North and Central European Plain.

The southeast coast of Norway lies on the Skagerrak Strait, which connects to the North Sea and the Kattegat Strait area through the Danish Straits which lead to the Baltic Sea.

[taxi]

27. Where would someone from Norway be visiting if they sailed east?

Let them make that comparison and get back to me.

[Celerity]

30. no clue what you are on about, as if a Norwegian did sail into the Baltic they would most likely

be going to Germany or Sweden or Finland or Estonia (Stockholm to Tallinn, Estonia is a very well travelled short cruise for Swedes) or the islands in the Baltic (mainly Åland, Gotland, and Öland, plus some of the Danish islands like Bornholm, etc) They would be far less likely to go to Poland, Lithuania or Latvia. Almost no chance they would be going to Russia (the small exclave of Kaliningrad is a very hard border, and that only leaves a tiny coastal part, the most extreme Easter part of the Baltic, that leads to St Petersburg), unless they were commercial sailors.

[taxi]

33. There was something in the post about an underdeveloped country.

Underdeveloped compared to what others? Compared to those closest to home maybe. Who is he comparing the US to?

[Celerity]

34. None of the nations that make up almost all of the probable destinations are underdeveloped.

The US isn't even listed as a full democracy anymore, the last time it was was in 2015 (may change now with Trump out)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. The index is self-described as intending to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states.

The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.

[taxi]

39. Knowing that the original comparison wasn't relevant to Warsaw Pact Nations or those on the Baltic,

you actually exposed the sarcasm in my original reply - someone from Norway would not say the US was underdeveloped in comparison to the countries of both of our references. Sometime I forget that it is needed.

edit to add: forget to : sarcasm :

[taxi]

40. but then again, it was just a school saying that

some schools never learn

eta:

[Celerity]

42. the Warsaw Pact ended 5 years before I was born, and I am not familiar with this

referenced 'school saying'

cheers

[hibbing]

14. Well, at least we once were, for some of us at least n/t

[Pepsidog]

17. The truth hurts.

[AZ8theist]

18. They are correct. 73 million Americans..

...have underdeveloped brains.

[Azathoth]

19. TBF nearly every country has poorly developed infrastructure compared to Norway

They are consistently at the top of the rankings.

[erronis]

20. That ain't fair. We're quite well developed for the 0.1%.

Great healthcare - probably have a wing of a hospital in their name.
Super transportation - don't need stinking roads/bridges when private jets are so much faster.
Education? Our children are born with great minds and have choices of very expensive schools.
Air/water quality. Fine in our gated multi-hundred acre communities.
Crime. Yeah. That's too bad that everyone else is so violent. They can stay outside.

[peppertree]

23. And for the military

If we dedicated even half as much effort to our civilian needs, as we do to our bloated and often misused military, there'd be nothing we couldn't do.

But 75 years of MIC/RW propaganda has taken its toll (military spending= "Security"; civilian spending = "Waste" ).

[Roc2020]

22. harsh but deserving

[AllaN01Bear]

24. true . not since the 1950s . you think we have the best roads , airlines , best telephones ,

and other parts of the infastructure are falling down around u. white picket fences and little alice dosent live here any more. and no one wants to pay for it. friend of mine whines " i dont want to pay my taxes".

[Escurumbele]

25. I am confused now...I always thought we were exceptional, the best country in the World...

No???

[Mysterian]

28. In every respect except for our military

All empires crumble from wthin and the imperial USA is no different.

[Xavier Breath]

29. Norway isn't saying anything we don't already know from living here.

But' it's nice to get the validation from outside the country.

[ananda]

31. Two causes: deregulation and privatization.

Or in one word: Republicans

[Celerity]

35. institutional racism/white power too, which kneecaps vast parts of the populace

[Renew Deal]

32. Looks like a cheap shot from some school rather than a statement from their government.

[FreeState]

38. The largest public university in Norway (State funded and operated)

That being said the referenced statement was from over a year ago.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_University_of_Science_and_Technology

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norwegian: Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, NTNU) is a public research university in Norway with the main campus in Trondheim and smaller campuses in Gjøvik and Ålesund. The largest university in Norway, NTNU has over 8,000 employees and over 40,000 students. NTNU in its current form was established by the King-in-Council in 1996 by the merger of the former University of Trondheim and other university-level institutions, with roots dating back to 1760, and has later also incorporated some former university colleges. NTNU is consistently ranked in the top one percentage among the world's universities, usually in the 101–500 range depending on ranking.

NTNU has the main national responsibility for education and research in engineering and technology, and is the successor of Norway's preeminent engineering university, the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH), established by Parliament in 1910 as Norway's national engineering university. In addition to engineering and natural sciences, the university offers higher education in other academic disciplines ranging from medicine, psychology, social sciences, the arts, teacher education, architecture and fine art. NTNU is well known for its close collaboration with industry, and particularly with its R&D partner SINTEF, which provided it with the biggest industrial link among all the technical universities in the world. The university's academics include three Nobel laureates in medicine, Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser and John O'Keefe.

[Celerity]

37. they edited it out (AND the original was posted March 14th, 2020, so more than a year ago)

https://www.facebook.com/NtnuInternational/posts/in-accordance-with-the-recommendations-from-the-ministry-of-foreign-affairs-ud-n/1938840679592408/

[BannonsLiver]

41. Our military sure isn't under developed

Outside of that I’ve got no rebuttal. Hard to argue.

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. The specfic reference was for "collective infrastructure", such as public transport

In line with the advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I, as NTNU’s Rector, strongly recommend that all NTNU students who are outside Norway return home. This applies especially if you are staying in a country with poorly developed health services. This also applies for countries with poorly developed collective infrastructure, for example the USA, where it can be difficult to get to the airport if you don't have a car. The same applies if you do not have health insurance.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200315142403/https://www.ntnu.edu/corona/students-abroad

That's the archived page from the time the Facebook post was made (14-15 March 2020). Yeah, I think the USA is well known for public transport being a problem in many cities (fine in some of them, of course).