That's kinda funny.  You have basicly an annual deductable, like so many Americans.  Yours is just a tad higher than my family deductable.  A notable fact that I find incrediblely amusing.  What country is this, anyway?

Doubtful.

They have a higher life expectancy because they have a lower infant mortality rate.  They have a lower infant mortality rate because they record infant deaths differently.  In the US, if a fetus is delivered naturally, and was not known to already be dead before labor began, it's counted as an infant death instead of a late term miscarriage.  Thus skewing the life expectancy stats compared to nations that don't include infants that die during or shortly following birth.  I'm not sure how Canada does it, but it's still apples to oranges.  There is also the differences in a higher likelyhood of a US citizen dying as a young adult due to risker lifestyles.  Extreme sports have participants from everywhere, but they are almost invariablely invented here for a reason.  Also, Canada doesn't have nearly the minority population that the US has, and blacks are prone to heart disease for genetic reasons, just as an example.  There are so many things affecting the overly simple metric of life expectancy that comparing two different nations like that is apples to oranges.


Those aren't facts, they're statistics.  Numbers never lie, but the polled sure as hell do.  What kind of result would you have expected?

It's much too late for that.

That's it exactly.

They get thrown out.

Irony is that this comes back to my comment about access being more important than provision.  There are some great hospitals in Havana, Cuba.  It's also likely that a poor citizen who can get to said hospital is going to get care so long as the hospital isn't already at capacity with citizens with a higher political value.  It's not true that it matters how good the hospitals in downtown Havana might be, if you can't get transportation to said hospital when you need to.

Because they are not solutions to the underlying social problems that begot the debt to begin with.  It's akin to a middle class family that can't pay the rent because of their oppressive credit card debt payments choosing to apply for another credit card to pay the rent.  Eventually the creditors are going to get wise.  Considering that Greek debt on the secondary market hit an effective interest rate of 205% today, I think that those creditors have already done so in Greece's case.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/11/greek-1-year-bond-yield-hits-205.html

Taxpayer funded healthcare isn't the answer to that either.  There are many Canadians who cross the border just to be able to get timely health care.  Like any other public good, health care will be rationed in some fashion.  The US system is broken because it's partially socialized care, and thus has many of the problems that plague social systems (deferred care, lengthy waits, poor service) as well as issues that drive the public want for such social systems (incompatible compensation networks, varied service models, uncovered populations).

The question is this, is provision of health care a right?  No, it's not.  For if it's a right, then you and I have a claim to the skilled labors of medical professionals, and that is as close to slavery as our modern societies will tolerate.  I say that access to health care is a right, and it is in the US but not in many other places.  I have the literal right to be seen by any specialist without discrimination, provided that I can pay his wages as well as anyone else.  That is not the case in Britain, which can deny such access to medicine as a means of controlling the public cost of health care.

Given a choice between the two perspectives; the right to access versus the right of provision, I'll choose access.


The US has been the market for medical innovation for decades.  Without the high potential profits that such a market represents, many of those great health care services that you can get for less elsewhere wouldn't be available at all.  And teh Cuba reference is rediculous.  Again, it's a matter of access.  Sure the political class has access to free & high quality health care in Cuba.  The ruling classes have such access in every nation on Earth.  This is nothing new.  Yet, even the politicos in Cuba would not have such access if the US's semi-free market in advanced medicine did not exist.

I can solve the debate in ten minutes.  If there must be taxpayer funded health care in the US, then it should be simply defined and never require a new government agency to manage it.  Simple enough rule, if a medical procedure, prescription medicine or device was available to the wealthest American 50 years prior to the current year, then the state should have no problem providing such a service through a public clinic.  But if there is a preferred modern procedure, over the counter alternative, or more advanced medical device; pay for it yourself.  In this way, anyone could go to the public clinic, staffed by government employees, to have a bone set and cast or get a polio vaccine. 

As an aside, I work for a major international corporation founded by some guy who invented a light bulb.  Where I work there is a clinic that is sponsored by the company itself, staffed by salaried employees of the company, using modern medical devices invented by the company, that charges nothing for the use of their services during normal business hours.  At the turn of the year, this clinic will be able to handle full 'primary care' for employees (as opposed to just work like a walk-in urgent care clinic, like it presently does) and plans to open up primary care services to all employees and their dependents regardless of which company sponsored health care plan (traditional, HMO) or unsponsored (Health savings account) that said employee has chosen.  At present, the clinic intends to remain at it's current cost point for all services.  This is a model that existed due to 'mutual aid societies' that were very common in the US prior to FDR, and were the model that American trade unions developed around in the 30's & 40's.

Considering that at least some of those same employees have chosen to not use the company sponsored plans, one might just wonder what motive that a souless company only after the pursuit of profit might have to pay the salary of such a clinic staff.

1) Happy employees with healthy children are productive employees and...

2) company sponsored access to affordable health care (not just health insurance) is a kind of goodwill that promotes loyalty among management salarymen and unonized wage earners alike, even when those who are being manipulated know the motive of the company. 

There is a silver lining to employer based health insurance that you might not recognize in a nation that taxpayers fund medical needs.  Another is that, in order to be adequately covered, one actually must be a productive member of society or otherwise be able to pay for care yourself.  Socially darwinistic, perhaps, but true nonetheless.

While this is true, look at Argentina now.  That was less than a decade ago.  If they had chosen to pay, they would still have people dying on the streets.  (On some level, they still do, and every other nation on Earth as well; but on a relative level, Argentina would still be laboring under the weight of the IMF if they had accepted the terms)  This is pretty much the same conditions that Greece is in now, with the additional problem that Greece does not have control over it's own fiat currency and the other EU countries that use the Euro are going to suffer some significant knock-on effects regardless of what Greece does next.

That actually depends upon who we are talking about.  The Greek people are no more a homongenous whole than any other society.  If the Greeks repudiate the government's debts, and form a new government quickly, it's just as likely to be beneficial in the near to middle term (5-10 years) for the Greek middle class.  If they go with the plan as it is, even if it works (which is extremely unlikely), it will be at least a decade of austerity.  The time frame matters in the same way that a length of a criminal sentence matters.

Greece will default eventually.  It was inevitable two years ago.  We are just watching the stages of civil collapse occur on a modern timescale.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/02/five-stages-of-collapse.html

Shortly after it becomes obvious to the majority of the European public that Greece will collapse, it will likewise become obvious that so will Poland, Ireland and perhaps Spain.

If Spain fails, the EMU fails.  If the EMU fails, the Euro fails; and europe will likely collapse into a renewed state of nationalism and distrust of each other.  Likely also followed by a hot war as long repressed tribal greivences return to the surface of public discourse. 

It is far too late for this to be an orderly or civil form of contraction, as far as the European Union is concerned.  I'm not sure about the United States.

If it's unified, it is by default, not voluntary.  Even Bitcoin wouldn't be voluntary anymore if the nations of the Earth all decided to abolish their own currencies and use it as legal tender.  I don't think that would actually be worse than the current conditions, but it wouldn't be a choice if the choice is between Bitcoin and nothing at all.

He might at that, but the word has differnet meanings to different people.  There can never be any agreement about what 'socialism' does or should mean because there can never be much more agreement about what Karl Marx intended in his magnum opus 'das kapital'.  It can be interpreted in many different ways, but he was most likely responding to the obvious poverty in the wealthiest city on Earth at that time, London, England.  He never lived long enough to see the fruits of the industrial revolution come to pass, and thus that same abject poverty alieviated by capitalists' own self-serving greed.  Who knows how he would have been changed by that.  As for myself, any society that actively aggresses against a citizen for the simple act of opting out isn't a free society, even if the vast majority of the middle class can reasonablely be considered the privilaged class.

http://www.panarchy.org/spencer/ignore.state.1851.html

If you don't have the right to ignore the state without that same state grabbing you and throwing you into a cage, then you are not really free no matter how much liberty the state permits.

Although they mention Bitcoin, what they want is a unified fiat currency system like a super Euro or "Amero".  I don't know that this is good publicity.

Ah, the Ancient Aliens series is the only one I'm aware of.  Their documentaries on the early presidents are great, but lengthy.

And why is it unaccessible?

No.

This is where the old maxium "what goes up (the hill) must come down again" applies.  Eventually, it will be heat, even if that car sits at the top of that hill until the heat death of the universe.  Probably.

Well, they used to.  And they still have some great documentaries.  The aliens thing annoys me too, but I know it's just marketing.  They don't really buy it either, but do those shows that way to present the history to those who wouldn't otherwise be interested in a documentary of how the Great Pyramid in Egypt was similar to structures of South America.  As for the sharpshooter competition, I love that show!  My whole family watchs that series religiously, and it's one of only a few shows my son will watch.  The winner of Top Shot season 3 was a 28 year old summer camp counselor who was and entirely self-taught natural talent who creamed an entire set of experienced professionals and world class champions using weapons that he had neve seen before.  It was awesome.  He made shots the Marine snipers would have been proud of, after first shooting the Barret 50 that same day.