3 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Our reading
National politics dominates over regional politics in nearly all first-world democracies.
Their wordsPolitics in virtually all first-world democracies is nationalized.
Their wordsAnd yet, life expectancy about two years more than the national average is rather common in rich regions with selective migration, even in European countries with even access to health care, like France and Spain.
Their wordsBut it's not meaningfully possible to understand the world at this scale - macroregions are real but analysis of policy, including transportation but also the usual economic and social topics, has to be down at the level of sovereign states first with no illusion that a province in a large country is comparable to a smaller country.