My experience with the public health system in Spain

The issue of how to pay for health care is on everyone's minds these days, and there are arguments of various kinds on all sides. My aim is to describe here what it feels like to be in a public health system--one in which the government is the ultimate provider.

First, what you pay for health care

Public health care is paid out of tax income, and taxes are higher in Spain than the U.S. The U.S. is a relatively low-tax country: taxes represent 26% of GDP, while in Spain they are 34%. This includes all national and local taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes.

Since I am a full-time employee of the University of Navarra in Spain, I pay income tax and social security to the Spanish government, which comes to 24% of gross income (tax details here). My tax rate is slightly higher than normal because I am a foreigner. I pay no tax on this income in the U.S.

Bad, bad Jimmy Brown

I wrote this column when I was editor of Business First of Columbus, in 1989. I re-published it in 2018 amid the Colin Kaepernick controversy. And with Jim Brown's recent death, I thought it might still be relevant.

Oct. 9, 1989
    Jim Brown’s first book, “Off My Chest,” arrived under the Christmas tree in 1964.  For a 13-year-old fan of the Cleveland Browns, the book was a revelation.  The Jim Brown who carried the football for the Browns, and who said little in public that was controversial, suddenly showed himself to be an opinionated, angry person.

     He was angry at Paul Brown, the coach who he felt treated him like a trained beast.  He was angry at the coaching staff at Syracuse University that took so long to give him a chance to prove himself.  He was angry at the white world that treated him as an outsider and an inferior.  At the same time, Jim Brown showed himself in that book to be extremely grateful and loyal to the teachers, coaches and friends who helped shape his life and steer him toward improving himself in school.  There were almost two personalities at work.

     So it was with some anticipation that I waited to meet this boyhood hero who was in town to promote his new book [in 1989] “Out of Bounds”.

     The blurb writers have pulled the most salacious and outrageous material out of the new book to hype it.  Brown’s life since retiring from football at age 29, a game in which he set records that only recently have been surpassed, offers plenty of outrageous and salacious material.  He was accused of throwing a woman off a balcony during a quarrel.  (He says she jumped).  He has hosted parties in his Hollywood home where the women pranced around naked.  He has cultivated a public persona that is arrogant and intimidating.  He has boasted of amorous conquests of the starlets who appeared with him in movies.  Was this guy who was once my hero really a jerk?