We have to get rid of the middle men (the HMO) and the government should run the health care system like before the 80′s.

The Veteran Affairs system is good example of socialize medicine run by the federal government. If a veteran get sick, he just have to get to the emergency room and no matter how costly the treatment for X diagnosis, he does not have to pay a dime. I have seen veterans with treatments estimate in $100,000 and he never pay anything. So, if Congress say that socialize medicine is bad, then they are contradicting themselves.

Sorry for my English.

Yep – I’ll have that delicious pork sarnie thanks!!

God bless the NHS is all I can say. So many GOPs seem to have sucked up the nonsense that’s peddled about socialised healthcare. Sure it’s expensive, and it doesn’t always work efficiently, but who fancies having an ‘Enron’ deciding on what’s the best treatment course for anything more serious than common flu?

Incidentally, I didn’t realise that I was short-sighted until I went for Army Air Corps testing as a teenager. Talk about being gutted. I had to settle for the PBI!

Also, would you like a delicious pork sandwich?

TRH

My mother was also diagnosed with a brain tumour. She received three surgeries (performed in an MRI-equipped operating theatre), many months of chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. She also lived in a government-funded hospice for the last two years of her life. Total cost to our family? Nothing. I am certain that in the US she would have been dead within a year, but here, she lived for seven years after her diagnosis, which allowed her to see her oldest child complete university and see her youngest graduate from high school.

Her sister (my aunt) also had a brain tumour. She made it nine years, also under a government system that even paid for palliative care in her home so she could still see her daughter and be a mom as much as possible. Her daughter was only a year old when she was diagnosed.

I also had chronic ear infections as a kid, but thanks to my parents being able to access a doctor no matter what, my balance is excellent and my hearing is pretty normal for a woman my age.

It’s incredible what being born Canadian instead of American has meant for my long-term health and for the quality of care my mother and aunt received. And yet some Canadians want to toss out our system to imitate the American model.

Oh, as for the taxes issue? We actually don’t pay taxes much differently than folks in the US, and somehow we still afford universal healthcare (plus we don’t pay insurance premiums for it).

Okay, i do, I just don’t want, to use {what you say} pinheads”.

Have they even heard of rational discussion at fox? Or intelligent debate? I am infuriated, on the one hand that the republican voices in the media are this psychotic and outrageous (I pray that they are misrepresentative, that there exist people who really truly do believe in just smaller government and lower taxes…not that they’d be right, but at least that they’d be moderate), and on the other hand that the democratic House, Senate and White House have so miserably failed to punish with righteous fury said republican party for their transgressions over the last 8 years. What the hell is the point of a filibuster-proof majority if they aren’t going to force the other side of the aisle to watch every terrible thing they have worked towards for so long burned to the ground?

Where the hell is the justice for the angry liberal? Am I the only angry person? And most importantly, will they get this fucking health care thing figured out before late April of next year when I turn 24 and am almost assuredly dropped from my mother’s health insurance?

TRH

I agree that our cases are testament to when the system fails to work, and it’s refreshing to hear someone else tell exactly the same tale – nice to not be the only one.

Or perhaps it’s only indifference—which doesn’t incline me towards extending any sympathy in return, eh? I do wonder which one it is, at times. I hope it’s not the latter.

I choose to be charitable and assume it’s just a certain willful blindness. How else do you explain this Oscar-scene performance?

Notice I said “Oscar-scene”, not “Oscar-worthy”– as in, the scene you put in the movie hoping it will get you a nomination. My read is that you can actually see the gears grinding in Glenn Beck’s head where he’s deciding, “yes, I’m going to try to push these emotions further”. Yet, I have no doubt that, in his mind, no heretical thoughts about how maybe single-payer really *would* be a better way… are ever allowed past his internal censor into his conscious thoughts. In other words… willful blindness.

This was an excellent post, Lisa.

TRH