a mind is made up. People can tell you forever that your girlfriend is treating you badly but you are in love and will never acknowledge it.

I have pointed to 98% of international sites, to Japanese papers, to German papers, to UK papers and because of anecdotal evidence, all those papers are deemed incorrect. Anecdotal stuff can go on forever. I knew a horse jockey that grew up in Canada. He swore that the Canadian system killed his mother. He was a bit high strung and if you wanted to get him ranting....bring up Canada's health care system. Truth be known....sometimes I did it for fun, to watch that horse jockey sized man puff up. Bad me.

I don't think I said our health plan doesn't need help, it does. I have also pointed (this will be part of a coming blog) that all (BIG LETTER ALL) the other plans of the world have MAJOR, long term, financial problems. Problems, that in some countries are at hand.

I've never said that other countries don't get the job done. They do.

From a humanitarian point of view nobody should be denied health care. Nobody should be denied food, clothing or shelter.

At what point does Progressive government stop? Maybe we should all just go back to sharing the same communal soup pot, give it all to the government and they will give us our soup. IF that is the case, I will no longer work and spend time on, my love of playing guitar. It would be heaven, I could spend all day playing and no longer worry about health care, food, clothing or shelter. Yep....that would be heaven. Or would it be hell in waiting?

I am glad that I have reached an age that I can see an end. Because I see the future as the worst sci-fi, no freedom, government obsessed life and to me...that would be a living hell on earth. Arnie's movie, Total Recall comes to mind. To top it off would be the movie Minority report.

You could call me an ex-sixties blue collar hippy. In the sixties I could never have, could never have dreamed that America in 2009 would have so much government control or so many people that aren't willing to take care of their own problems. Sigh.

Now they are talking about kids going to college without a need to pay for it. Hell there are too many people with college degrees that are worth the paper they are written on and we are going to get more of them.

And I'd certainly say that's the case with health care in the United States- it's only freedom if you can afford it.

I'd rather have both available- "when you live under my roof you will follow my rules", but "if you can afford private insurance, go for it".

Instead, when we have only one available, there is no real freedom, no real choice. An excellent example (sorry Robert, go ahead and delete if you think the example is inappropriate, but it's the one that comes to mind) is the so called freedom to terminate a pregnancy. There is no freedom for the poor single woman with no health care- $600 in debt is better than $6000 in debt either way you look at it, and thus, abortion becomes the *only* choice, regardless of the mother's wishes.

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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

I see you posting comments and hope you will create an account and join in with both feet. When you create an account the letters to prove you're a human go away and a tracking feature shows up so you can see who replied to your comments. Plus you can also write Instapopulists and if you dare to tackle it, a blog post.

I think there is a lot of misinformation, confusion going on here because I 100% agree with you and also lived abroad where I was almost shocked at how health care was a right instead of a privilege. But point was it was way cheaper AND in a foreign language no less, the Doctors listened to me. Now I just got some sort of bacterial lung infection so no major anything but these details he is putting in his blog....I just never heard anything like this in the UK, France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Italy or Germany. In the UK, I just remember people talking about how incredible the system was.

Come join in the party for real, create an account and let's discuss.

That the housing bubble popping has caused, I expect we won't see a resurgence in spending until household debt reaches 1978 levels. And we might need more stringent usury laws to get there.
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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.

Commodity prices particularly oil/gas prices. Average gas prices are heading north of $2.30. Corn and soy beans are increasing to which will obviously translate into higher food prices.

If by fairer manner you mean that you don't need to worry about your own health coverage, I will agree. It is nice when someone else is at the wheel taking care of things. I don't think it was a fairer manner for the people denied cancer treatment by the UK government mandates, that isn't fair.

We've all heard that old saying, "you live under my roof, you follow my rules." Most kids can't wait to get out from under the "roof." With the freedom comes responsibilities and they need to learn to take care of themselves. I read that it is not uncommon these days for kids in their thirties are still living with their parents. Is there a generation that likes to be taken care of?

Here is something I was think about...a plan. The government sets up its own health plan and it would be a base plan everyone can buy into. They must invoice (no using other services like the IRS to collect payments), they must adjudicate claims, they must have their own administration (paid out of collected premiums NOT taxes), they must pay for all meetings, they will set payment schedules. They must run it as a business because the deep pockets of the taxpayer would not be available to them.

Private plans already work under the above model. Private plans would have the mandated base plan. They could also have plans for sale that have added benefits. Private plans would be non-profit or profit. To make everything on par with the Feds, they would not be subject to property taxes, State gross premium taxes, local taxes, etc. Don't force anyone through taxation to buy the government plan but (like many countries) everyone must purchase an insurance plan.

When I get to my final blog it will address the shadow administration stats given my the government. When you hear their low admin costs, well just like CPI; the unemployment stats; you aren't given the rest of the story. When I read the blogs like the Kozkids and HoffPo, I really think they are expecting that a single payer plan is going to do more than any other single payer in the world. So many, many of them on the above blogs have no idea that other countries are having funding problems, have coinsurance, etc. They sound like they WANT something for nothing.

I just found this today. Apparently the Canadian Act doesn't cover prescriptions and leave it up to Provinces to provide as a supplement.

Health care services include insured primary health care (such as the services of physicians and other health professionals) and care in hospitals, which account for the majority of provincial and territorial health expenditures.

The provinces and territories also provide some groups with supplementary health benefits not covered by the Act, such as prescription drug coverage. The level and scope of coverage for supplementary benefits varies between jurisdictions.

Benefits not covered by the Act, such as prescription drug coverage

Under the Canada Health Act, all necessary drug therapy administered within a Canadian hospital setting is insured and publicly funded. Outside of the hospital setting, provincial and territorial governments are responsible for the administration of their own publicly-funded prescription drug benefit programs.

Most Canadians have access to insurance coverage for prescription medicines through public and/or private insurance plans. The federal, provincial and territorial governments offer varying levels of coverage, with different eligibility requirements, premiums and deductibles. The publicly-funded drug programs generally provide insurance coverage for those most in need, based on age, income, and medical condition.

Outside of the hospital setting, provincial and territorial governments are responsible

Fair?  Yes it is nice when someone else drives, pays my bills, etc. The question becomes, how far are we willing to go in allowing the government to pay our bills?  Do I or we want to have the rule, "when you live under my roof you will follow my rules" or do we want freedom.

Hi all,

I just want you all to be aware, once again, if you see a spammer and that's anything, from a blog post to a comment, trying to post something not relevant to EP, such as promotion of a product or some scam, you have control to remove that post from this site.

If enough people vote down on a blog it will be removed and please use it. That's the content promotion/demotion system, but it can also be used for spammers.

We had a spammer get 30 minutes of airtime with a blog post because I was offline. Most are caught before they arrive but if one slips by, use those down arrows to get it off the site ASAP.

Spam, even hand done spam (which they have to do on EP, I catch all of the script kiddies), are like roaches...they are everywhere and if you see one, you have to kill it immediately.

link, which validates the above on housing prices.

I realize this is probably old news to you, but when one considers all the TARP monies, together with the simulus monies, which have GREATLY increased offshoring of American jobs in the last few months, and that some of those elected clowns at the federal level are finally beginning to comprehend the resulting dramatic shrinkage of the tax revenue base (as the former workers make up the bulk of fed taxes collected - including FICA, of course, while corporations make up only around 7% - which should actually be 35% to 40% - but for all that "profit laundering" at all those offshore finance centers, a k a tax havens).

Unfortunately, it's too late now as the cascading effects will probably make the Great Depression appear mighty tame by comparison.