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I get very frustrated when we are compared to socialized medicine. We have wonderful medical care, and it is very available. If we change our health care system, no one will be able to get to most innovative care. In fact, no one will be able to afford "cutting edge" medical care. I do not understand why any one (ie Liberals) want to ruin our health care system. Yes, there are some problems, but I want to have options, not lines and LONG waits.

What the report fails to mention (realize) is that every person in the United States will recieve medical care at the Emergency Room of their choice, should an emergency situation arise.

Effectively, there isn’t a single uninsurged individual in the United States, if this is taken into consideration.

Game, set, match...

As I've noted previously, the problem of the 45 million uninsured is exaggerated.

As noted on Fox News the other night:

45% of the 45 million are not US citizens!!!!

Of the remaining 55%, 8.5% are those earning more than $75,000/year (presumably self-insured) and about 54% are in the age group of 18-35, young, healthy, invincible, don't care, don't want to spend a fortune on insurance ...

In other words, the 45 million figure is just so totally BOGUS!!!

Well, a large proportion of our medical care IS socialized. And I maintain that proportion is responsible to a large degree for increased costs.

Last week I toured a hospital in Sweden. It was clean, well-run, etc. But the taxes on income of 40% at the national and county levels to provide these services were glossed over. They don't have huge pockets of...well, of potential Katrina victims that are cared for out of our funds.

High level business execs have private insurance, justified by the loss of "value" if they are sick and have to wait for care. The government still pays the medical bills, but the hospital gets the insurance payments also as a purchased ticket to immediate care. So, if you want timely care, you pay for it.

My response wasn't popular: (1) I don't want to pay that high an income tax for my care; (2) being non-insured or under insured in the US is a non-issue, since no one is denied care; and (3) the bottom line is that if I get seriously ill, I want to be in the U.S. rather than any other country in the world, including Sweden.

I guess this is an example of universal health care...

“TOKYO (AP) - A pregnant woman miscarried in western Japan on Wednesday after nine hospitals refused to admit her and the ambulance transporting her crashed on its way to a tenth...”

also:
“In a similar incident last year, a pregnant woman died in Nara after being refused admission by about 20 hospitals that said they were full.”

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070829/D8RAPFU80.html