I wish I could say that all the armies in the world cannot stop an idea (i.e. universal health care) whose time has come. Instead, all the evidence indicates that America is the place where good ideas go to die.

When I was working in Germany, I had universal healthcare and the amount taken out of my
monthly check was in relation to my income. I could go anytime to any doctor I chose and unlike here,
seldom had to wait very long. The dentist in Germany did such a great job that once I got here the
dentist called on other dentists to look into my mouth for they had never seen anything that advanced.
That was 40 years ago. I worked for the government here, a component of the DoD, and I had good
health insurance comparable to the one overseas, but it was only available to fulltilme workers or
managers. The majority of our employees were either parttimers or intermittents and they had nothing.
For the life of me I cannot understand why Americans would not want Universal Healthcare? I know,
the rich can afford anything, but then the majority is not rich, most don't have fulltime jobs and we have a big problem. Plus the medicine is being pushed way too much, and people are so brainwashed here they have to go see a doctor for every little thing. Don't use common sense. They would rather take a pill and then end up with taking 6 to 15 medications a day, thereby introducing even bigger problems. But then I read that 50% drop out of highschool and I don't have to wonder anymore.

Hillary is right. Obama is wrong.

Eliminate insurance companies. Using their own talking point- the more people in the pool, the cheaper the rate per person- what bigger pool can there be than one which includes every American?

Great, a universal health care plan sounds great but no one has a clue how to make it work for 300 million people. Most cite examples of much smaller countries (Canada 33,224,000, France 64,473,140). Many of those that are having their own problems currently:

- UK is now in favor of denying overweight people & smokers becuase of high costs (how would that go over in the land of the obiese people?

- Like every other nation, France is wrestling with runaway health-care inflation. That has led to some hefty tax hikes, and France is now considering U.S.-style health-maintenance organization tactics to rein in costs.

- 57% of Canadians reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist; 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room.

- Saskatchewan is under fire for having the longest waiting time in the country for a diagnostic MRI " a whopping 22 months.

- One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practising medicine in the United States.

Think the corporate owned media will report this as a top story? Nah, I didn't think so either. So, now that the doctors are on board, is there anything we can do to encourage Obama, the likely Democratic Party nominee, and the Democratic Party platform to make the leap to single-payer health care? It would certainly help if the Democratic Party would stop taking corporate campaign contributions on its own as a matter of principle. No "law" is necessary to do the right thing. Not taking health insurance industry contributions as a matter of principle would truly separate the two major parties politically on this issue and all the issues important to working people and their familes. Remember, we don't just need to get a single-payer health care supporting President. Nothing will happen unless we can get non-corporate friendly health care "reform" through a corporate subsidized Congress. To get meaningful health care reform we need the Democratic Party as a whole to reject these campaign contributions so they are not beholden to them.

It cost me $800 for less than an hour of a dentists work which was done over several sessions costing around $2400 then the 'other things' cost about $1500 more which weren't labor, with insurance it still cost $1900 out of pocket. I make decent pay so I could pay for it but it took about 100 hours of my pay of my work to pay for his 3 hours. Nice dentist and his brother and Dad were all dentists...I'd be pretty darn nice too with that kind of income for so little work. If they just did 5 hours of work a week at that rate that's $17,200 a month each.
Some try to tell me I should be afraid of terrorists trying to kill me because they hate me for my 'freedom' but the only terrorists I know will do so is our US Government with their economics and 'trade' policies and the health care system they refuse to change.

I've worked in healtcare for over thirty years, I'm currently the Bus. manager for a group of Emergency room physicans, I can tell you that five years ago the self pay portion of the A/R was 17% today and for the last three years it has held at 47%! Most of these accounts end up being written off or assigned to collection. So we all pay! The emergency room physicans, because of EMTALA Laws, cannot refuse to see anyone, everyone knows this. That's why people with colds and sore throats, people who want drugs refilled or attempt to refill them come to the E.R. which is a trauma center. The physicans must spend many hours being recertified every year to maintain a level two trauma status. We are currently only one of two level two trauma centers in the State, we also have people from Montana, Wy, and other aread using our facility. Something has to happen or be done because everyone wants the best healtcare, unfortuantly only a few have insurance and the rest of us pay for the uninsured! Wake up people, this is a crisis and something has to be done.

Yeah I'm pretty tired of being held hostage at a job and not being able to innovate as an entrepreneur because of "pre-existing conditions" and exorbitant premiums. Also tired of armies of beings hired with my premium money to deny me any and all tests and procedures my doctor might order. Without universal health care, this country sucks giant donkey balls.

Too bad both of our candidates are shills for the insurance industry.

Uh-oh. Time for the Fox News Cesspool scoundrels and the ultra-Right vermin on talk radio to start beating the drums to work the Dupes into a frenzy against this anti-American socialistic medical plan . Just more big gummint bureaus getting in the way of those who wanna fend for themselves when disaster strikes medically and economically. We gotta remember that Ronnie said gummint IS the problem in the U.S., and then proceeded to undermine labor unions that the Plutocracy wanted him to do. Now we have Puppet Bush with the same views , together with Senator John McBush hailing himself and proudly beating his breast as Reagan reborn and preparing to embark on more of the same (read: The Puppet's Third Term).

They probably know that, without it, they'll soon be out of a job.

this is the story that should be front and center.

What a surprise. The insurance corporations have screwed themselves out of a job. They screwed the insured, the hospitals and the doctors. Their time is past, the only people supporting them are the right wing talk show hosts who I am sure get paid to drum up support for these corporations.

In an ideal world, I would love universal health care. But because doctors are so in bed with insurance companies, I don't even trust them to be advocating for it for the good of the people.