"You don't suppose it might be helpful for the Globe to point out that the Democrats vision of health care is a disaster before the election, do you?"

If any other type of seller had failed to give such "full disclosure", Edwards would have already filed the lawsuit by now. But for some reason, the trial lawyers always seem to give the Dems and their mouthpieces in the press a free pass.

He also forgot to point out that anyone who can afford to retires to Florida, which is probably the only reason why there are hockey teams in that state. Heck, half of Ontario spends its Christmas vacations at Disneyworld.

A very good friend of mine left Alsace to take a job with Hydroquebec where he manages a power station near Tracy. Whenever he needs medical care more serious than a hangnail, he hops a plane back to the Hexagon.(He's from the old hometown and my cousin takes care of him) He needed a heart bypass and was told by Canada that he had to wait two years, at the time he was employed in an extremely responsible position. My dad in NJ at the time, when he needed a heart bypass, was retired and got his the next day.

I know you guys dine out on these stories, some of which have a good measure of truth to them, but don't you wonder at times how come we are not all dead?

Peter:

The chicken runs for a while even without a head.

Peter - You're all dying, though, isn't that right?

I will pack and drive any one within 100 mi of Columbus OH.

Wasn't it P.J. O'Rourke who said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait 'till its free."

I have personal knowledge that (sorry, no cites, attorney-client privilege and all that), when the Clintons proposed HillaryCare in 1993 (which, among other things, made it a crime to opt out), investors/speculators were busy buying options on Mexican real estate along the Tijuana-to-Mexicali border area to establish clinics (run by American doctors) to treat American patients escaping American restrictions. Stopping affluent Americans from pursuing health-care choices is like Xerxes or Canute trying to stop the tides. Thus, any government-run system which assumes 100% participation is doomed to fail.

Peter B,

The human race survived for centuries when medical care amounted to little more than going down to the barber for a good bleeding. That Canadians survive their laughable health care system is unsurprising.

The fundamental problem is that any socialized system requires some means of rationing the scarce resource that is health care. Would you rather have some government functionary make the choice or would you rather let people be able to make the choice based upon their bankroll?

Calm down, everyone. I think the Canadian health care system is a model the way the Italian tax code is a model. But this whole issue of public vs. private is being drowned out in competing horror stories. We are regaled all the time with tales of Americans turned away from hospitals or being bankrupted by medical bills. Both countries are facing huge strains that we are only just becoming dimly aware of, because of demographics. The Boomers are going to leave one heck of a final legacy.

Firstly, Fred has it right. The absence of competition is, I strongly suspect, more of a problem than the bare fact that the government is paying for services. Some things it does just fine, childrens' medicine for example, and who is going to argue with that? But it is a little like education, isn't it? Public opinion is simply not going to accept large numbers of people dying without care anymore than they would accept kids left uneducated for financial reasons. But education costs pretty much the same for everyone and medical care doesn't. A voucher system for education presumably will cost and benefit everyone equally, but medical savings plans are still going to leave inequalities and gaps. The poignant stories will continue.

So the question in my mind is not just which system is better. That's easy. The question is how much public support do you add to a largely private system so that it isn't a sitting duck for the first leftist that wins an election.

In my town, here in B.C., the doctors are all old, or Indian, or South African. I think we have one obstetrician who is threatening to retire from overwork.

When we had nurses going on strike awhile back, one nurse told me she would move to the U.S.A. if the gov't didn't meet their demands. My response was, of course, but the U.S. system isn't socialized. Why aren't you campaigning for private health care?

She was horrified that I would even suggest such a thing and refused to speak with me any longer.