I know a simple fact, Doug, which is that in Canada my hospital treatment is done at no charge, because it's covered by national health insurance. That's the case for all Canadians, not just some of us.

I know that I pay less than $1,000 a year in income taxes to get that coverage. Match that.

I know that in Canada the patient and his or her physician decide on what treatment is to be done, because I have had any number of personal friends here who have confirmed that for me with their own stories of treatments they've undergone. This scaremongering about "a committee of "experts" overriding the wishes of a patient or the patient's personal physician is some snippet of something that Fox has dug up somewhere which they have blown way out of proportion. Many medical conditions in people are investigated by several practitioners (thus a committee) who are specialists in the field, before a decision is made as to what best to do...but the decision must be agreed to by the patient and the patient's personal doctor before it goes ahead. This happens not just in Canada, but also in the USA and in every other country in the world. There's nothing the least bit unusual about it, but your health insurance propagandists want to turn it into some kind of Orwellian scare story to get people to resist health reforms, that's all.


I also know that the largest number of personal bankruptcies per capita in the USA are now due to people being unable to meet their very high medical expenses, because I read it in your own news media from the USA a few days ago.

This is not the case in Canada.

I also know that you pay more already in income tax toward health care than I do...but I get full coverage for it, and you don't.

Nothing is provided for free, Doug, but our health care is provided at far less cost per capita than yours is, and it's universal. What your system really is, it's a huge subsidy to the drug companies and the health insurance providers, and Obama's helping them out by getting them more customers.

What I don't get is why you're not supporting him, because he's strengthening the corporate health insurance system you presently seem to believe in. ;-)

Here's some reading I suggest: Read a book by Kevin Trudeau about alternative health methods as opposed to mainstream medicine. If you persist in reading it, you'll probably be in a state of shock by the time you're done. I don't really have much faith in mainstream medicine, Doug, but I'm still glad we have universal health coverage in place in Canada, because at least it is there for the many people who do believe in conventional medicine, and it won't bankrupt them when they get sick.