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Okay here's another - what about the low paid worker who has refused promotion because he wants to keep helping the public on the front line. Should he really be denied health care because he didn't want to be bumped up the chain of command? Lets face it, well paid or not we are all equal in front of the law, so why not in front of the doc?

what about the low paid worker who has refused promotion because he wants to keep helping the public on the front line. Should he really be denied health care because he didn't want to be bumped up the chain of command?

Two parts.. First, he freely chose the situation he is in, why should the government regulate consequences of choices you make? Second, no one is denied health care in our system, that is a common myth. Emergency services can never be denied and the very poor do have Medicaid. When you are talking about universal healthcare, you are not talking about the poorest of the poor losing emergency services. If the market where truly free, your friend could freely choose the plan that best serves him, just like food. If a person needs food, they can choose cheap fish and chips, or they can, if they can afford it, choose to go to one of Ramsey's places. If the market where free, you would have companies offer services to all potential customer bases. In a universal system, even the poor person has to pay a chunk of the rich person's visiting Ramesey's place (using the food analogy.) Why should the poor have to subsidize the middle class and rich?

what about the low paid worker who has refused promotion because he wants to keep helping the public on the front line.

Even the unemployed here in the U.S. cannot be denied healthcare at our hospitals. Even if they cannot pay their hospital bills, by law, the doctors must admit them and treat them as any other patient. And our government does provide and/or subsidize healthcare for the poor.

that’s the worker’s chouice. he knows the risks getting into that position, so he has to sleep in the bed he made.

The United States of America produces approximately half of the new pharmaceuticals of the whole world each year.

Your system and other socialist systems do not allow for private industry or private profits to create the miracle cures. Instead your socialist system feeds like a parasite off my American system. I also believe that the United States of American produces all sorts of other technical advances in the medical field also.

I wish you would pay your fair share of the enormous health benefits that your system leaches off my country.

Also, your cancer survival rates and those of other socialist health care systems are atrocious compared to the United States of America, and that includes all social groups in America, including the twenty million illegal immigrants who receive free health care in American hospitals all over America.

Your hospitals do not supply sheets and are not up to the standards of American hospitals.

I have read over the last ten years a large number of horror stories about inadequate care, rationing of care, lagging medical technology, there is so much lacking in your system that I am absolutely stunned that you are making these statements.

The United States of America has by its continuous introduction of new medicines and medical technology saved your system from total and complete collapse.

The socialist system has only produced squalor everywhere it has existed. Your county has a lower standard of living than it would have if private companies were allowed to provide what the government tries to plan.

Absolutely flabergasted, an intellectual target rich environment.

Lets face it, well paid or not we are all equal in front of the law, so why not in front of the doc?

Here you run into issues with our principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In the USA we're not all equal in front of the doctor because the skilled specialist who graduated Johns Hopkins with honours has a right to charge what he sees fit and not just accept the same compensation as a GP who graduated from Grenada with a C- and then barely passed his boards and his residency.

The doctor has a right to charge what he wants and his patients have a right to go see someone else if they don't like it.

Let me give you an example: my employer provides vision care via an HMO (Kaiser Permanente) and the vision care is adequate. But I'm extremely picky about my glasses and a five minute appointment where I *might* get a decent prescription correcting me to 20/30 is not what I want. So out of my own pocket I usually pay for a one hour visit and a full exam, not just an eyeglass prescription. My correction is to 20/10 which suits me fine.

This cost me $150 for the hour exam and then $850 for the glasses and frames. So while I could have had them 'for free' I chose instead to get exactly what I want and I am happy to have that option. I'm also happy to have been able to have had access to an eye doctor who has a Lasker Award hanging in his office. I would not have had this access at my HMO.

Are you following this?