Nitpick: small “c” communistic, as in “communal”. The Communist notion of absolute materialism is about as un-Christian as you can get.
Five years ago in one of the most expensive cities in the world, the Parisien waiting room was empty except for me. There was no wait. Ambulance + doctor’s fee+ tetanus shot + hospital fee = $35 US with no insurance
Meanwhile, back in the States, three emergency room visits this summer for pneumonia, asthma, and complications from minor surgery = Over $22,000 pre-insurance now. Thank goodness for Medicare and my private insurance.
Tell me how bad Universal Health Care is going to be. I will take a chance. Give me the same health insurance federal employees have? Where do I sign? Meet you at that cafe with the lilacs? Ha! Gotcha, SA! Be cool and kind.
I suspect that if you needed a heart bypass or hip replacement, your story may have been a bit different. Still, I could be wrong as I haven’t heard much pro or con with regard to France’s system. I do know that things pretty much suck when it comes to Canada and the U.K. however, so if France’s system works better then good for it. I do know, however, that government health care is very popular among those who only need flu shots or Band-Aids. It seems to be when things get serious that the flaws in government health care become most obvious.
Plus, I feel that socialistic European economies are in transition now and that they won’t always be able to provide what their populations demand of them. (Who was it who said that all democracies are doomed to fail because sooner or later their citizens learn they can vote themselves goodies from the public coffers?) Socialism is a drag on productivity and on produce. Socialistic economies are not and cannot be permanently self-sustaining. Thus they are doomed eventually to fail, and when that happens communism is the likely replacement, and who in their right mind wants that?
And I am cool and kind! 
Cheers.
I’ve had an (admittedly minor) operation on the NHS and my wife gave birth in an NHS hospital following a high-risk pregnancy last year. I don’t know whether those fall into the “flu shots and band-aids” category according to you, but the NHS have been brilliant. Yes, you get the odd dipshit doctor whose judgment you have to question but I had doctors from both ends of the spectrum in the US too.
Really? You feel that? Personally I’m not seeing any issues relating to demand on public services that don’t also hold true for the US.
As opposed to the system in which corporations (like the insurance companies) do it?
That doesn’t remotely follow, nor is it consistent with reality. Where socialism falters, it’s usually capitalism that steps in.
Communisim in it’s perfect form was equal sharing of all things. The Soviet idea and the others were mainly called evil because they were also Atheistic. Jesus was said to take care of the poor,etc. ,even was quoted as saying a rich man would have a hard time getting in to Heaven, Told one man to sell what he had and give it to the poor. Ask any Christian to do that today, and they would look at you as if you were crazy.Just as the man did in Jesus time he walked away feeling sad.
Please cite examples of democracies that have failed for this reason.
USS Lollipop. They gave themselves sweets as treats, and catastrophe soon followed.
I have a Canadian friend from B.C. He had a heart transplant. Yep. that backward country was able to give a heart transplant. It has been about 2 years since he got it and he is doing quite well. They are among a lot of Canadians I know and none of them would trade for our system. They think we are borderline cruel .
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140918/we’ve_been_trapped_inside_a_bad_health_care_system_so_long%2C_we_don’t_even_know_how_much_we’re_missing_/ We don’t ever realize how much our crappy system affects our lives. Just think if worrying about coverage and fighting insurance companies were not part of our lives. I understand there are people like you who think we don’t wait for medical care, but we do. When I call my doctor, I am given an appointment at least 3 weeks in the future. That is called a waiting time. Then if you need a specialist ,you wait even longer before he can squeeze you in. The whole process takes months. We do not have immediate access to routine health care in America. We have long waiting times for expensive and not particularly good care.
No, you don’t “know” that. You believe it. People who actually live in those places and who have experience with their system have come into the various threads on this subject, and flat out told you that you are wrong. To no effect.
You simply roll right along, as if they didn’t exist, or their experiences are of no consequence. Are they lying? Or do you operate under the assumption that they are ignorant of their own experience, whereas you have the definitive certainty.
Its not like you offer proof that they are wrong, or they are lying. They didn’t happen, so far as can be determined. You simply pay no attention to people who very likely know what they are talking about, and assert your own truth with the “calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces.”
When was the last time you changed your mind because somebody proved to you that you were wrong? Was it before 1968?
Of course not. Before 1968, everybody would have considered proving someone wrong to the the height of rudeness.
Or maybe the depth.
It appears you’ve missed the numerous references I’ve made to a Canadian Doper whose mother had to wait nine months for treatment of her cancer. It also appears you’ve missed my references to Canada’s prohibition of private care treatment of conditions covered by the government system, and that things got so bad in terms of waits that a Supreme Court ruling allowed for private care coverage for serious conditions when the wait is unreasonably long. It appears further that you’ve missed the links I’ve posted (you know, the cites you’re always claiming I don’t post) regarding comments by the incoming Canadian health care president to the effect that that Canada’s health system is in very bad shape and that most Canadians have no idea how bad it is. You also appear to have missed the link I posted showing that cutbacks in serious, necessary surgeries are being mulled in Vancouver as a result of financial pressures. I recall also posting a cite regarding problems with the U.K. system.
These cites invariably lay there like dead fish. And the reason? Nobody cares! You guys just want government health care and that’s all there is to it. And while that’s understandable in the case of people who have no coverage, it results in vastly worse coverage for the majority of people in this country who already have good coverage. This is so typical of liberal solutions to social issues that “Mediocrity for all!” should be the liberal battle cry.
And as far as people under it praising it, that’s just human nature. IIRC, even the guy whose mother had a nine-month wait for her cancer still liked the fact that Canada has a government health care system. Some people under communist rule in the Soviet Union still sang its praises.
Plus, like I said, most peoples’ experience with national health care is limited to minor types of care, and if you can just walk in and get a shot or prescription and not have to pay for it, you think that’s it’s great. The trouble is at the other end where people are older and/or more infirm and when treatments are vastly more complicated and costly.
And this doesn’t even take into account the effect that government health care programs have on the motivation of people to go into medicine in the first place due to limitations on their income, and even more importantly, on the treatment they are “allowed” to provide.
Why, I changed my mind just recently. Since discovering this board, as a matter of fact. I learned that liberalism is much more pernicious and wrong-headed than even I ever imagined. 
What is it with European economies that makes them significantly more socialistic than the American economy?
Not unlike the question I put to you in #66:
Six years? Quick study.
The question you put to me in #66 is not deserving of an answer because it demands proof of a claim I did not make. I merely asked who made the comment, I didn’t contend to have thought of it myself.
Besides, you know how it goes when liberal policies ultimately fail or otherwise prove unworkable – everything but the actual cause gets blamed.
Well, you did ask about post-1968, and that makes the six years I’ve been on this board rather recent. Plus, being the compassionate conservative I am, I was willing to give you guys the benefit of the doubt for a while.
That is because even Canadians are telling us that conservatives are only looking at misrepresentations or to a small part of the big picture in Canada and blowing up problems out of proportion for political reasons.
Universal Health Care Message to Americans From Canadian Doctors & Health Care Experts
Gee, Canadian Doctors for Medicare is in favor of Medicare? Who’da thunk that?
Meanwhile, *"The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says **patients are getting less than optimal care **and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.
“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“We know that there must be change,” she said. “We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.”* Cite
[bolding mine]
Sounds to me more like the Canadians around here who are trumpeting the success of their system are not only biased but wrong.
That is so lame, yet you see it all the time from conservatives: “Some people say [insert scurrilous lie] about my opponent.” “I’ve heard [total fabrication] about my opponent.” It’s the coward’s way to cast aspersions, and then dash behind a tissue of denial; “I merely asked who made the comment” is a weasel way to avoid defending your position. It’s also why no one addresses your cites, which are nothing more than unsupportable anecdotes; like dead fish, they stink.
Sorry, the assumption was that the guy who said it had certain democracies in mind. Given that I don’t have time today to go rummaging around through The Annals of The Western World seeking out which democracies he may have been speaking of, I merely posted his comment as food for thought.
And the comments of the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association are unsupportable anecdotes? See, this is what I mean when I say cites are a waste of time. If I offer anecdotal evidence, it’s dismissed as anecdotal (yet curiously enough, pro-UHC anecdotes seem to have no trouble being accepted), and then when I post cites from authoritative sources to back up my comments, they get ignored, such as you just did with my cite of Dr. Doig’s comments.
But that’s okay. I’m confident that the board’s silent readership has greater powers of discernment than the usual suspects who are my opponents in these threads.