Who else other than me thinks that everyone should be entitled to free healthcare?

Nothing is free. We would still have to pay for it through taxes. There should be some sort of coverage for everyone, and some sort of cost oversight.

Ooops Micheal Moore brainwashed you. In canada and Britain, and Cuba whom Michael Moore loves, everybody is elegible but it can take 6 months to get even the most critical care. In that time, most people die. It is a great way to save money. Canadians and Britons come here to the Capitalist USA for their care. Our laws currently ensure that anyone who critically needs care gets it for free, You are wishing for no care, under a socialist system that will ensure that you die.
Under a socialist system your mother father and autistic brother would be dead. Sue the insurer, stating that the care meets reasonable medical standards of the community of physicians where you live.

1. The problem with "free" healthcare is that it isn't free. Someone has to pay for it, and if someone in your family works, they will pay for it through taxes. And because its through the government, you will likely pay as much or more in taxes and the quality of service will go down.

2. Look at places that have government controlled healthcare, such as Canada. They have to wait months to see a doctor or to get treatments. There are a lot of Canadians that come to the U.S. because they like our system better.

3. One reason costs can be high in the U.S. is because we have the most advanced technology to diagnose and treat people. If you have a serious ailment and you live in most other countries, you will not survive it. If we go to government healthcare, there is no motivation for companies to invent new drugs and products.

Before you rip on the U.S. system, go talk to someone from another country and see what they think about their system versus ours.

Free?? Free for whom? Free for the taxpayers? Free for the people who have to wait a year to get an EKG because the clinics are overcrowded... as I heard happens frequently in Canada?

The United States economy is based upon free trade. Believe me, doctors aren't happy about insurance company constraints... and neither are patients. And none of us is happy about the rising costs of healthcare. The insurance companies charge us, though, because they can. The answer is to organize against the insurance companies and legislate them out of their position of power. Remember when long distance telephone calls were $.39 per minute? The government broke up the phone company's monopoly and look at the prices now... free with a cell phone contract...

Free health care, though, will lower our standards in medicine and create major problems with delivery of health care services. Just go ask how things are in Canada. It's certainly not a case of the grass being greener on the other side... as those pie-in-the-sky lib's tend to think it is.

There is NO SUCH THING as free healthcare. You either pay the hospital, the insurance company or the government. One way or another everyone pays for healthcare.

I do sympathize with your family's dilemma, and all those that have been through similar experiences. That being said, there is no such thing as "free" health care, we are going to pay for it. My husband and I have health care insurance, and pay dearly for it believe me. Are you asking us to also pay for someone Else's through tax hikes. I don't want universal health care, and if we are willing and able to pay for ours, we should have that choice. If there is a way to cut some of the many, many, social programs we are already paying for and help those with out, I'm okay with that. If you want to tax us to death, I'm sorry, we are about taxed out thanks.

By free I assume what you really mean is that someone other than you should pay. Why??

Nothing is free, If you don't pay for a thing then you get exactly what you invested in it.

It is illegal for a hospital to refuse to treat a patient suffering from a life threatening problem. Covering the cost of universal health coverage for every man, woman, and child in the country would bankrupt us faster than anything I could think of.

Unfortunately all you can think of is the short term gain while ignoring the long term cost.

Wow, bad medical luck in your family. And while we're at it, why can't we have free food in this country? Since we are so rich why isn't groceries free so no one would ever have to go hungry? And since we're so rich, why isn't housing free so no one ever has to go homeless? What else? Where else can we see suffering in this world and complain that something isn't free so that we can all live in utopia? oh, that's riiight, because that isn't LIFE.

Move to Canada and try it for 5 years and come back and tell us why we don't have nationalized health care.

I'm torn. I hate that the media has one successful operation and acts likes it's the norm. ALL people don't survive leukemia or cancer.

My mom and dad....died from what they said was easy stuff they should have survived from. You don't dangle a carrot out in front of a rabbit and then not give it to them when they catch it.

I love hope....but I'm angered by the false hope they give people.

If the poorest can't get it......save your advertisements.

People die. It is the natural event of things. People always want to skip that part. But at what cost? Save mom for 1 week and bankrupt the family?

Personally......I don't want government to have any say.....they could be matching my blood type and making a business decision. Who's more important?

What's basic? There was a child here who DIED from a TOOTH infection. There's people here who DIE from no heat? My mom and dad should be alive and well from what they know.....but they aren't.

But at the same time.....people like George Harrison spent millions and still died.......I don't know the answer.....I do know the LAST hands you want it in.....is with the government.

There is no such thing as free health care, any where in the world. You and your family are not entitled to free health care. If insurance won't pay, get the treatment then sue the insurance companies.

all but the most callous and selfish agree

What's the matter bunky? Didn't Hillary's HMO plan work? Remember? Turn it all over to th insurance companies and THAT will SURELY drive down the cost... If you want socialized healthare, move to England. This country is a capitalist based country. Healthcare, just like dental care and airline travel is a privilege. You want it, earn it. But, not to be completely dispassionate to your plight, I offer you this: There are "Free" clinics in most major cities. Also, if you show up at your local Emergency Room, by law, they HAVE to treat you. Regardless of your inability to pay or your lack of insurance. They must treat to stabilize and then provide you with a plan/means for continued care once you leave their facility. This will also help to explain why you must wait three, four, five and six hours for care there. Because every uninsured person within a fifty mile radius will be there for free healtcare for everything from the common cold to drug addiction.
Personally, I'm tired of having to pay for my family's food. I have dreams not yet attained. I think the government should provide free food. Say, from the most expensive dive in town?! They can be mandated to feed us until we are nolonger hungry and then they must find a viable (free) food source for us for the rest of our lives.
Me, I am a capitalist. I've worked hard all of my adult life so that I can provide for my family. I don't like nor want big government nor do I want to be enslaved by my government. Taxes and social programs are indeed enslaving. And, incase you haven't noticed, the U.S. IS number one in healthcare.
I feel your pain. Next time Hillary wants to "Fix" something like healthcare, just tell her "No."

Compare tax rates in countries with "free" health care to those in countries that don't. If you still think there is such a thing as free health care, read a book on economics. The US DOES rank #1 in the world for the QUALITY of health care available. Lack off government control is the reason for that.

Sure, as long as I'm not paying for it.

I think the health care delivery system here is deeply flawed, and I pay for my insurance.

Why? Corporate profit. Supply and demand. HMO and Pharmaceutical lobbying and advertising. Who else can mount a $400 million ad campaign (about 2 weeks profit)?

if your family couldn't meet the relatively low standard of acceptance of insurance companies they would never have met the socialized medicine hurdle.
but yes, it would be great if everyone had free health care but that would be about third on my list. free food is far more universally needed and then housing. the question is are there enough republicans to provide this for all of the democrates, and there are not.

yes. totally agree on this.

Yeah any decent country should provide healthcare for its citizen. That's what a country is for, for protection, regulation, and others to help its citizen to live better.

But the one thing that prevent US to do this basic funciton is the existence of insurance company; it leads to power struggle, manipulation, monetary greed, personal interest, money, dirty politics that ends up in indirectly killing the lower class people who can't afford for expensive healthcare cost that is raised by this wicked system.

Basically insurance company is eating off the money like a parasite. It's the upperclass people who gets to decide this system; and the lower class people who are dying that has to suffer.

Yes living in today's world I think everyone on earth should be entitled to free healthcare.

I do too. Also, I want free housing, free food, free gas, free electric, free military protection......get real.

The insurance companies have taken over USA. We did at one time rank #1 in health care . But the insurance companies have roll us along with the republicans back to the 60's in healthcare. You pay for insurance but they don't want to deliver the services you need. We don't need to have free healthcare so much as we need to keep the insurance companies out of being doctors. Maybe we need a new way to make healthcare affordable