That I find to be a very convoluted thought process.  You are likening one’s life to maintaining PROPERTY?  How OLD are you?  Did your family own slaves????   Do you think it should be exactly the same principle in play as for one’s property???  Wow.  All I can say is WOW!

Glad you saw the jest in my words.  No malice intended ever from me.  Just having a little fun.  Yes.  I understand a business model.  I take exception to it being a profitable "industry." It is not in Canada.  Its not the model of health care that Tommy Douglas fought for and implemented.  I don’t see that the health care "industry" belongs on the stock market- ever. 

 I find it as unconscionable, as I would if an auto company tries to take short cuts on the assembly line and settle for a cheaper auto part for example, so as to imply a better product, and imply a safe vehicle has been made for a consumer to invest in.  An insurance company who touts a policy as "safe" but might play roulette with someone’s life should also not be allowed. The hypothetical vehicle above may kill a family.  The hidden charges of pre-existing conditions in a contract also kill people.  Not everyone is going to do the due diligence to examine the fine print on the contract the same way that the average consumer is not going to examine the sub - contracting of each auto part to discover that the company is "cheaping out" on that one mechanical part that creates the weak link in the vehicle, making it less "safe."  Not the best comparison, because it looks like I support the business model of the current medical insurance system in the US. I don’t think there should ever be a CONTRACT for health care.  I don’t have one.  Excuse the pun here, but if I "contract" any sickness in the entire world that exists and I am entitled to get well for a minimum of charge. In Canada I pay about $55 month. I have additional private insurance that is work related for extras like private hospital room, travel abroad, etc. which is lovely, but not that essential because of the national model.  Period.

It horrifies me that one man gets something like 1/7 yearly of all the money paid into one insurance company because he is the boss.  that is total BS!!! Don’t quote me here but I think it was United???? NO ONE deserves that much money for his job at the head of a health insurance company!  (reference the Wendell Potter interviews on Bill Moyer website) 

In a way you’re right Elle.  The ‘Twain shall never meet. Ever.  But until there is a family crisis in every GOP’er family, whereby they lose their fortune to medical bills as a result of being denied the right to survive an illness by an insurance company, they will not understand the compassionate gesture of having a national system.  Even millionaires deserve to keep their money right where it is…in their own bank accounts. 

PS: What’s a blue dog? 

I may even print that and put it up on my wall, Bill.  Well said.  All good points.  Sarah Palin might even be successful if she happens by this page, reads your "kampf" and adopts the basic principles. I almost got a tear in my eye, and could hear Pomp and Circumstance playing faintly in the back of my head. 

Allow me to speak in plain ol’ American…Mr. Bill, while you just lean on your big gun and listen.  Don’t forget to put the safety on.  But when some asshole in a cheap suit thinks he deserves a pat on the back for saving the insurance company money, and Wall Street cowboys celebrate a blockbuster year of earnings,  because "cheap suit" found a way to deny benefits to some unlucky sod who was just diagnosed with cancer, and by one big swipe of a red stamp issues indirectly his death warrant, this indicates to me that the world you’d like to live in is WRONG, just plain WRONG about this one point.  THAT IMHO is unconscionable.  If your God gave us the right to life, sometimes it takes a little oversight from your big brother to protect it.  Does that at least make sense to you?  Typical hysteria to reference Karl Marx BTW, nice touch. 

I agree with you.  It is shocking the amount of irrelevant, unrelated BS they stuff into a bill in order to "appease" the various regions and their powerful lobbyists.  The very corruption you endured for 8 years is going to take a long time, if ever, to change. YOUR HEALTH CARE BILL should be about a page long. It frightens me a lot —the potential for abuse and further corruption, and my prayers are with you all that you have a solid realistic resolution for the greater good of all soon!

And no,  Canada’s wasn’t implemented in a few days either.  Saskatchewan was the first "sample" province to have it put in.  Just 1/10 regions to start with.  In the USA, the model of veteran’s care seems to be pretty good as a starting point.  But I’d like to see California to start with since they are on the verge of collapsing, then add states into the mix.  I was born in Sask. and I remember being held over my mother’s head screaming my head off as all the women in town demonstrated for Medicare. Google Tommy Douglas if you are curious. He is the "father" of the medical system up here and its ideals. 

Yes. CH.. the HC in Canada isn’t perfect.  Maybe its the same problem in the US, finding doctors who want to live in the out of the way towns to service the people out in the sticks.  That’s the problem.  Not many doctors with a big dream want to live out in desolate, isolated communities.  Same in Canada.  Also, so many doctors make good money and don’t care to work endless hours.  It is up to them how much they want to make and how much they want to work.  So many spend mornings on the golf course or in pilates or at home with their families, and only have a 4 - 6 hr per day commitment to their profession. Its really odd. My doctor retired last year.  My new doctor, a recent graduate, is only at the clinic near me on Thursdays. And its a lousy walk in clinic.  She works out of 5 different clinics, and is also a highly regarded specialist in hormones.  It is the way she has designed her life and likes it that way. I find it annoying as hell, but I have no say in how she runs her career of course.   

The bottom line is that even those Americans with great insurance programs who might find they really can afford 100,000’s of dollars for care that happens to be outside their insurance perameters should not have to spend that money on medical procedures AT ALL. Everyone should receive the care they need without playing roulette with a bureaucrat who has your lives in his hands, while playing the odds and the statistics of what might go wrong with you over your lifetime.  Its just plain wrong IMHO.

Also, the worst thing that you guys can do is settle for less than a single payer system.  Or a hybrid of single payer and private like France.  

And there needs to be rules about trade unions for the nurses and doctors and support staff too.   The nightmares in Canada are largely a result of the unions playing hardball and nurses or doctors or other staff going out on long strikes.  THAT is where the backlogs begin. And re-negotiating with unions every few years always sets us back another decade it seems.  Long long wait lists, services cut, etc are because everything comes to a grinding halt when there is a health care strike. They need to fix that!