quote:Government supplied health care is health care rationed. If you think it's bad now, wait until that suspicious lump has to wait 3 months for an MRI. Besides, where will all the Canadians go when they need an MRI?
This could win an award for the most overused bit of propaganda defending out broken health care system. The fact is we are the ONLY industrialized democratic nation that does not guarantee health care to everyone. Ask anyone in England if they have ever seen a medical bill, they haven't. My friends mother had liver cancer. She had to have three operations. She got the best care, didn't have to wait and paid NOTHING. If she lived here, in addition to worrying about having cancer she probably would have had to sell her house to stay alive.
The United States ranks 37th in terms of quality and availability of health care. Waiting times in many European countries are the same or better than ours. I would encourage you to watch the PBS FRONTLINE special where they go into detail about how other nations do it. You can watch it online on the PBS site.
The myth that the private sector does this better is laughable. We spend several times as much as other nations on health care and get worse results, worse life expectancies, worse prognoses and more debts and lived ruined financially. They spend far less (and virtually none of the administrative costs we do and they are healthier and live longer.
None of this I expect will cause you abandon the ideological position you need to identify with for whatever reason in favor or a common sense system that would actually help people. No, it's just if the State does it, it has to be wrong, and damn the consequences.