I'm Canadian, and I don't really care very much what people think of our system here in Canada. In my opinion it is great. I think wait times are overstated, in situations where wait times matter. To espouse some personal stories to compare and contrast here, my girlfriends father had some pretty serious colon cancer, from the time it was found it took around a month to get the surgery he needed(including consults and whatnot) and to start treatment. Cost to him and his family 0$.

My uncle lives in Texas, (I love Texas Btw :P ) and he had some serious issues with his spleen. It took him about a month to get his surgery(including consults), he is fine now but still requires continuing monitoring.Cost to him and his family with his insurance coverage ~40K.

I honestly hope that everyone everywhere(not just in the US) gets free and available healthcare.

While there might be some hybrid model in the middle somewhere that may work. I think dealing with a teired model of healthcare will leave people who can only get the public healthcare the shaft.

Average wait times in Canada are worse than the wait times for those Americans who can afford the Best Healthcare Money Can Buy ® - but they actually compare favourably with average wait times in the US (obviously not counting those 47 million Americans who will wait forever for procedures for which they don't have coverage and which they can't afford).

To counter your Texas anecdote... I live in Texas, and my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma (extremely low survival rate). The cancer doctors we have in Dallas are some of the best in the world. My dad had insurance and it covered an upwards of $200k. My dad's fine today, and has been cancer-free for 5 years.

The only things that stood out as being broken was the doctors' paranoia of being sued.

You did not mention what your father's out of pocket expenses were. In the Canada example, out of pocket was $0.

I don't know, but it couldn't have been much since my dad makes less than $50k a year. In the Canadian example, you need to figure in taxes.

I don't think your father's income has anything to do with how much he would have had to pay out of pocket. And since I understand you object to the government running things, do you have philosophical objections to the USPS delivering your mail? Or receiving Social Security benefits when the time comes? (These are serious questions, I really would like to know)

My dad's income does have something to do with it because I didn't notice anything change for us financially despite all that he had to go through. Ergo, it couldn't have been that much. I know most doctors don't care how much you make when they bill you. Sorry that I wasn't clear.

I can object to things on a philosophical level and still use them. We become reliant on programs that should have never been created in the first place.

I may pay higher taxes, but I get a lot of "socialized" service. Seems like a decent tradeoff to me.

Responding to below: Taxes are graduated so the largest increase in tax will be to the rich and uber rich, but to them it will be small pickings.

Earned income goes up. Capital gains as far as I know is max 15%. Other tax laws for the really, really rich might change this though.

Hospitals are only required to treat emergencies. Even if you go in for an emergency without health insurance they will bill you directly for it. If you goto a hospital and get diagnosed with cancer they aren't paying for your treatment or the required drugs. If you're lucky they might pay for the initial tests though which are probably 1/100th of the actual cost of the treatments you'll need.

People die with no hope of health care as they don't have the $$. Would you rather be told you have to wait or can't have it at all?

Obama's plan is a third option. The health plan will create a government option to make it available to those who can't afford it.

So it'll be sort of like the postal system. If you want to use Fedex or UPS, you can, if you want uber cheap you can go with USPS, but you don't see Fedex or USPS out of business do you?

Responding to comment below: And so many are still without health care! So this will alleviate that. But this will also make it cheaper for large companies like General Motors because they can now switch to the cheaper government plan. It will allow companies like GM to be more globally competitive because european (not all?), japanese auto companies do not have to worry about health care costs.

If the gov plan uses taxpayer money, it doesn't necessarily mean that private insurance will fail. And this is because there will be some who will want the higher quality private insurance. The fact is the richer you are the more you will pay for even modest upgrades. So those who can afford private insurance will still have a reason to go for it. This is evidenced by what TomOfTTB said above who said there are stories of Canadians who fly to the US for health care right? And it's true private insurance will get hit hard by this, but they will probably not all die out. In fact private insurance companies are probably the main driver of the opposition.

We already have Medicaid.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/06/whats-point-of-public...

In the US, I had to wait 1.5 weeks to see an orthopedist when I sprained both my ankles, with an excellent ($550/mo) PPO insurance plan. In a suburb. Not in a state you'd list in the top 15 for population.

It's a damn good thing I was lucky enough to have the opportunities in life that helped me get a job where not going to work for a month was OK. If I'd had a slightly less flexible situation, I would have been totally over the barrel. You cannot walk with two sprained ankles, but it's not considered a temporary disability either.

Cuz, along with universal healthcare, we're missing worker protection laws too.

On that note, you "hear" about people dying while waiting for surgery in Canada, but where's the evidence?