Crap! I had totally forgotten that we were supposed to ship Greenspan up there to ruin your banking system.
Funnily enough, you could argue that the biggest threat to Canadian safety is the US. 
While we’re at it, I’d like to apologize to those Canadians and Europeans who had to deal with people with the IQ of turnips telling them that they didn’t understand how their own health care system worked, and that by damn they had to wait for months for care because that’s what Fox News said. Oh, and for calling you not fat.
Oh, no, that’s okay; you can keep him. We’ll just stick with having a Prime Minister who has a Master’s Degree in economics.
On the other hand, you owe me an apology for all my acquaintances’ nonexistent British friends who assured them that the NHS was the worst thing to happen to Britain since the gunboat stopped being a useful foreign policy tool.
How fast were the right-wingers embarrassed by the lies, misrepresentations, and hyperbole put out by their leaders and pundits?
Grow some self-awareness.
Name ten.
I mean, do you really think nuclear-armed France, with perhaps the best public health care system ever created, is relying on the U.S. for its defense? How exactly is anyone supposed to invade a country with nuclear weapons and a rather plainspoken first use policy?
The Ardennes?
Bwahahaha! Name TEN?
So you acknowledge my point but want to quibble over the number?
Most of Europe, including France, would be goose-stepping or calling each other comrade if not for the U.S. and it’s support and protection through the years since WWII (and which of course says nothing about our role in keeping them free by winning WWII). And I’d wager most of Latin America and the best parts of Asia would have fallen under communist domination by now as well. The fact that France developed nuclear capability while being shielded by U.S. military might means nothing.
Yes, yes, the United States has a big dick - we can all see it on the maps.
Apparently Canada does too. ^^^
ETA: By the way, I see the OP’s point. There are so many people here who are interested in accurately and helpfully discussing policy considerations and geopolitics. I don’t know what we’d do without all this great commentary. You’re all a bunch of jingoist morons clad in stars and bars or maple leaves or whatever.
Which just reinforces that the OP’s post was a laughable suck-up.
What protection? NATO forces in Europe- including American forces permanently stationed there- would have been overrun by the Soviets in weeks.
It was the threat of a nuclear exchange which protected Europe from communism, and only that.
Winning World War II, which of course was not solely - or even mostly - an American enterprise, has nothing to do with the cost of health care systems, since UHC was largely a post-war innovation. I realize this all happened a long time ago but there’s history books and everything.
Now, please explain how a nuclear-armed country could be taken over by the USSR. It’d be a fascinating explanation, I am sure.
Didn’t quite a lot of the world fall under Communist domination anyway? Some protection. Aren’t you the guy who once claimed that all Western European countries had no armies during the Cold War and none of them had conscription?
The U.S. is rightly regarded as the world’s foremost military power. Asserting that other countries have universal health insurance because of it is plainly stupid. The United States already spent as much, per capita, on public health insurance as other Western countries. There’s no tradeoff happening in the USA that isn’t happening elsewhere; the U.S. was forking out just as much dough for its fractures health care systems as Canada, France, et al. were for their universal systems.
Europe’s Latin Lover dick is bigger
Anyway, if you want to pull out from your bases, feel free. The surrounding communities will be sorry to see you go, but Europe can manage fine now. kthxbye
Soon as we’re done killin ur doodz.
Not quite, but pretty damn close - and this is a point worth following up on. Medicaid and Medicare together cost $676 billion last year, or about $2,200 per American (not per covered American, just per American).
The UK NHS budget was a hair over 100 billion GBP in 2009, or about $160 billion, or slightly under $2,700 per Briton (all of whom, of course, were covered).
Medicare covered about 45 million people in 2008, the last year for which I could find figures. Medicaid and SCHIP covered about 40 million.
Assuming no Medicare recipients were also eligible for Medicaid (unlikely, but I can’t find combined coverage figures, so we’ll use the best case scenario), Medicaid and Medicare cost $7900 per covered American.
Now, granted, Medicare covers the old, and Medicaid the poor, and both groups cost more than average. At least balancing that is the fact that Medicare involves substantial co-payments and deductibles; the NHS has minimal co-payments and no deductibles.
In other words, we pay three times as much to give 20% more people 70% (that’s a generous figure) of the coverage.
I’m aware of that.
I remember it well. 
Because of the knowledge that it would be wiped from the face of the Earth if it didn’t acquiesce? Do you really mean to imply that France has ever had the capability of destroying the Soviet Union?
You’re speaking of the Warsaw pact, I presume, which was signed by countries already under Soviet control? What would you have had us do, invade the Soviet Union and liberate them? I said that countries in Europe which have been free have been able to remain so because their freedom was protected by the U.S.; I didn’t say we freed countries already under Soviet domination. So I don’t know what your point is.
No.
So I guess it’s fortunate for me that I never said that, huh?
So what? The problem with you liberal types is that you regard all the money earned or spent within the U.S. as being a huge pot belonging to everyone, but it isn’t. It belongs to the individuals who earned it, or at least got to keep what’s left of it after having sizable portions redistributed by the government to people who didn’t earn it. And many of those individuals paid for health care that is widely regarded as the best in the world, and by so doing paid for medical research that brought even more excellent health care. They also paid for medicines which funded pharmacuetical research and advancement. So when you take money spent by a certain segment of the population for excellent care and deride it for costing more than so-so care for everyone under a government plan, it’s a false comparison.
Clearly though, things have gotten out of hand in terms of what our health care costs, and many options exist for dealing with it. But liberals, who can’t stand the idea that some people have it better than others, ignore those alternatives in favor of putting everything in the hands of government so as to ensure equality for all (except, curiously, government workers and politicians themselves) even if it results in substandard care for everyone.
What are these options, pray tell? Why don’t you share with us the Starving Artist plan for health care reform?
I was thinking more along the lines of the many Communist countries that were not in the Warsaw pact, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba, et al.
Sure you did:
You were, quite obviously, referring to universal health insurance. As I have pointed out, the fundamental premise is false - the U.S. already spent an enormous amount on public health insurance and so was not foregoing that expense in favour of military spending.
No, I don’t.
Agreed. That’s how countries work. The government has to take a cut for things that markets can’t do on their own. There’s no better way of doing it. I certainly do wish things like armies, central banks and fire departments would spring from the ground of their own accord, but they don’t.
I have not made that comparison. Perhaps you are referring to someone else.
My point was that the USA spent as much on public health care - e.g. Medicare and Medicaid - as other countries with universal health insurance. In FY 2008 the United States spent at least $900 billion on Medicare and Medicaid, about $3000 per taxpayer, despite covering only one in three Americans. In other words, the USA was, and is, paying similar public dollars to buy the so-so care you don’t like and getting less of it than other countries are getting. That’s just plain fact.
If you don’t like public health insurance, then the status quo was arguably worse than a truly universal system. Under the U.S. plan as existed one month ago a middle class taxpayer would be paying a fair amount of tax money to find two health systems that they got absolutely no benefit from. If you’re gonna have a mediocre system at least let everyone use it.
I admit the health care legislation is amazingly convoluted, but my understanding is that your statement is entirely false. It does not “put everything,” or even most things, in the hands of government.
I’ve already refuted each and every one of these points, with cites, in another thread, which you have ignored. I am not surprised.