Free or Government health care?

I suppose it depends on the style of free health care your president is talking about. over here the only restriction is that you have to be canadian citizen and live in canada. they don't tell you which hospital to go, which doctor to see. if you need medical care, go to hospital or your family doctor and they will recommend a specialist if need be or give you prescription. there are private clinics but they are small and you won't see many of them because of the system. only rich people, illegal immigrants or foreign workers without health insurance go there because they are not accepted anywhere else. In France however, I heard you get it even if you are not citizen or pay tax to govt there. so there are different styles of universal health care. The bad thing here is that there aren't enough doctors and equipments for everybody because I heard they go to the US for more money. This is smething our system has to fix to match France. But all in all I know what I can afford and for me, paying $ 2 - 4 for any presciption and not a dime for hospital stay is better than remortgaging a house.

Hmmm. I'm kinda on the fence about all this health care proposal stuff. I mean, I am one of the people who can't get insurance at all for one reason or another that I don't want to get into right now. I do think that there should be an affordable option for people like me who aren't impoverished, but can't afford or can't qualify for private insurance, though. I just don't know if I really want all that much governmental control over our health care system in the way that I've heard about.

Esterlou, as a citizen of the U.K. which has (or had) one of the best health services in the world and free for all U.K. born citizens, then I have to disagree with you (in part). I'm not sure exactly what the differences are, but I feel that health services should always be free to the user. I know that this can be costly, however if the new U.S. one was modelled on the U.K. NHS then it could work quite well and efficiently. Over in the U.K. we hear horror stories about ambulances not picking up patients who can't show their medical insurance certificates, or operations being cancelled because the patient can't afford it. The NHS nearly didn't start up because so many doctors were originally against it, however enough eventually signed up to it for it to become a success.

Thank you very much for the link. I have signed the petition. The wording states exactly my thoughts and concerns.

I'm kind of on the fence with this myself. We need some kind of change to support the people that need it, and they are many. I don't like the idea of the government controlling certain aspects of health-care. Even something as simple as state medical programs (in Mass.) such as Mass-Health Insurance, Medicaid and Medicare are not available for many people that have no insurance. In some cases insurance simply can't be afforded or it costs so much in out of pocket expenses for services that they can't use it. This is a widespread problem throughout the country, not just in my state. Something needs to change, I'm just not sure how or to what extent. Sorry I just don't feel as though I can justify signing the petition at this time. I do however feel as though the way it is isn't working at all. Brightest blessings, Mari

I think that people should be able to choose what doctors and what hospitals we want to go to. We the people shouldn't be tied down to certain doctors and hospitals. When I was having to use gov assisted healthcare for myself as well as my son, they said that I was allowed to go to this one doctor at the clinc down the road from where I was living at the time, and then out of the blue I started to recieve a bill for their service. The gov told me that they had switched my doctor and my clinic without letting me know and that i was going to have to pay for my services. they had never sent a notice in the mail or picked up a phone to inform me of this change and I was stuck having to pay for the doc out of my pocket. Not even the people at the clinc said anything to me, just went on and charged me for going. some parts of me wishes that they would just step aside, but then again I guess that it is a good thing that they have some control over where the ppl that use their insurance.

We have always had government funded health care up here in Canada, and it has worked great. some religious groups choose not to take anything from the government, so they pay 25% out of pocket, and their churh pays the rest, a pot that they pay into, instead of paying a health tax. Also, my husband is American, and the few times he's needed health care up here, he has not had to pay much.

It's hard to tell what the solution is. Medicare and Veterans Administration health programs are run by the government, and people seem to be pretty satisfied. Some people say the U.S. should follow the example of the UK, Canada, etc., but those systems have their own problems: it's very expensive to cover every person throughout their entire life. (The UK has a 17% value-added tax--basically a national sales tax--to finance health care and other programs. People in my state were up in arms when the state sales tax went from 6% to 7% -- they'd probably march on Washington if they had to pay 17% tax!) Whatever the solution is, it's going to be expensive, especially if every person wants the right to see the doctor they want "without delay" and to have the health insurance that "best suits [their] needs"!

I will still respond to this even though this discussion isn't really structure correctly. It is basically statements not a question. I believe health care should be free to an extent. I believe medication should be free after a period of time. If something id dicovered for example the cure of small pox. I dont think they should charge us after being discovered for so long. They should know how to make it efficent enough by now instead of profitting off of health. God bless.