[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Yes, healthcare costs a lot, but it costs a lot regardless of whether the government collects taxes to pay for it, or the people pay for it individually.

This may be the case, but paying for your healthcare individually does have one very large benefit, especially because health care costs a lot: If you are healthy, you don't need any!

As opposed to the Canadian system, where you end up paying for somebody ELSE's problems. If it's not contagious, it's not my problem!

And the real reason health care costs so much *IS* because of things like "health insurance": It abstracts the payment for healthcare from the individual, who likely doesn't have that much money, and therefore, one cannot charge more than the typical customer can afford to pay, to a monolithic corporate or government entity with loose accountability and nearly bottomless pockets. There's a REASON why the government seems to pay so ridiculously much for things: because nobody really cares. To the average man on the street, what the government or a corporation spends on something is a statistic with little or no personal impact on him. When I was young, buying "health insurance" was something you had to do if you lived in an area with a strong mob presence.

Insurance is a big sham: How else would it even be profitable, unless they were obviously charging you more than they were paying out? Unless the Mafia is trying to sell you insurance, don't bother. Keep your money, it'll do you more good in your hands than someone else's.

The fact of the matter is that the healthcare system in both countries sucks in the same way for different reasons. In Canada, it's government-funded healthcare. Everyone gets it, including people who rightly couldn't afford it, and therefore don't really need it, and as a result, in some places, it can be too crowded with people getting unnecessary treatment. In the US, it's because of insurance companies and frivolous lawsuits, which has jacked up costs to the point where people who SHOULD be able to afford it, CAN'T anymore. The system sucks. Pick your flavor of suckage.