health safety training...

It’s natural to look to England. It’s just not all that useful. We will never have a situation in this country where you are not allowed to purchase your own care on the private market.

Wrong! The Canadian system might not allow private health care, but there are many private health care providers in the UK, BUPA being the biggest one. It is quite possible for a British citizen to go their entire life without using the NHS.

Even with something that minor, I was extremely worried that the treatment would escalate to something that would cost me thousands of dollars, and I hesitated for several days before getting some follow-up treatment. I was lucky, the ear problem did clear up, and soon after I decided it was too stressful to be without any insurance so I finally signed up for some.

I have a friend who refused to see a doctor for months about constant severe indigestion after even small meals, and he *had* excellent health insurance. He was paranoid about having a pre-existing chronic condition on his health record just in case he ever decided to quit his job and would have to pay massive premiums because of it.

He was lucky too. When he finally did go, the problem was still manageable, but if it had been something more serious, he could have died.

She has since completed six chemotherapy treatments, and she has just started radiation therapy that will continue daily through January. Again, all is free to her. Is she cured of cancer? We don't yet know. But what would her condition be if, instead of living in France, she'd been living here in the States, jobless and without money, and with the cancer, undetected, spreading daily through her body.

And there's the example of another friend of mine: a freelance artist who died several years ago. Because he was an artist, he never had much money, and thus he couldn't afford insurance. His tooth became infected and he didn't visit a doctor (no money, no insurance). Finally, when his arm began to swell up, he went to the local hospital emergency room, but it was too late. His infection had developed into blood poisoning, and he died hours later. And I can't help wondering...some sort of universal health care might have saved his life.

Just my two cents worth.

However, the gap used to be much wider and has narrowed considerably over the past few years as governments strive to accommodate these more expensive treatments in their budgets.

But it remains a fact that overall, the universal healthcare systems perform close to the American private system in terms of overall results (e.g. life expectancy and infant mortality) for far less the cost. There is no doubt that those systems are proving to be much more efficient at delivering healthcare to their citizens.

No system is perfect, and I very much doubt the USA will suddenly adopt an NHS-like system anyway, but something has to be done before the majority of Americans are priced out of the market altogether.

It’s natural to look to England. It’s just not all that useful. We will never have a situation in this country where you are not allowed to purchase your own care on the private market.

This is a completely bogus comment from Klein. There has been a private healthcare system working alongside the NHS in Britain for decades. When I worked for a British company 25 years ago, they provided private health insurance as a standard benefit, and I used it too, with no additional out-of-pocket expenses.

Ten years ago my mother opted to go private to have shoulder surgery when the NHS waiting list for the procedure was about 8-10 weeks long, and my brother-in-law, who owns and runs a small business, pays for personal private health insurance because it gives him additional options as to where and when he gets treatment.

None of us is wealthy -- all middle class people (my mother is a retired schoolteacher) -- and yet we were and are afforded and can afford the option of private healthcare, should we wish it.

That is not to say the NHS has failed us. Far from it. Both my parents owe their lives to the timely and excellent care provided by the NHS. But going private is always an option, and is an option taken by hundreds of thousands of British people each and every year.

As for the greater article, I actually am rather wary of the NHS Model, although I do support Universal Health Care (in the form of a French- or Canadian-style single payer system, or a hybrid of the two with some American elements). At least in the single-payer system, all the government is supposed to do is set the rates (and in an ideal world, create incentives for more doctors so as to keep a large supply of them out there). The doctors ultimately make the decision on how important your priority is in terms of getting treated, and if you don't like that, you can go to another doctor.

We don't charge anything to parents here in California. Free tuition, free textbooks.

Right and the laws of thermodynamics don't hold either and Barack Obama has a magic energy pony.

Tuition is not paid directly by the parent, but indirectly via property taxes. So it isn't free. The benefits are focused on the households with kids, but the costs are distributed amongst all households. A situation ripe for abuse, waste, fraud and corruption.

I guess you are back to looking for conflicts wherever you can, even when you really agree with my meaning.

I think most people use the word "subsidized" to mean a price is paid directly, but bought down by a 3rd party.

It is pretty preposterous to suppose that I thought education K-12 was free like the air we breathe ... but if you have an emotional need for conflict I guess you'll find it where you will.

Really you should have some self-control. Ask yourself "am I bending the meaning of this sentence just so I can get mad about it?"

And really the odd thing is that it is disservice to your own discourse. If you want to state an alternate plan for k-12 education, you could. You don't need to mire yourself in the semantics of "free k-12 education." Chances are everyone reading this know what that means to sufficient detail.

We don't charge anything to parents here in California. Free tuition, free textbooks.

Right and the laws of thermodynamics don't hold either and Barack Obama has a magic energy pony.

Tuition is not paid directly by the parent, but indirectly via property taxes. So it isn't free. The benefits are focused on the households with kids, but the costs are distributed amongst all households. A situation ripe for abuse, waste, fraud and corruption.

Seems like you had an opportunity there, to say exactly where you would draw the medical (or educational) line.

I already have, more than once.

If someone said an equivalent "a market is a mechanism for allocating goods" in that arena we might wonder if they were endorsing the status quo, or a policy shift in one direction or the other.

You are the only one wondering.

Seems like you had an opportunity there, to say exactly where you would draw the medical (or educational) line.