Do you think America will ever get socialized medicine?
88399
nope, not a long as they can hold down the poor with outrageous prices. That and its one way of comiting legal genocide. See if you get sick in this country and you can't afford the OUTRAGEOUS health insurance premiums chances are you make too much to get public assistance. By the time you do qualify? The cancer or what ever it is thats killing you will be too far advanced to do anything about.I have asthma. I can't even buy health insurance, life insurance or any other kind of insurance..and as you may have guessed ...I can't afford the medicines I need either. I am but one of millions with this problem.. Until we do something about our current government structure.. NOTHING will change. The rich will become richer the poverty stricken will starve and the middle class?.. well they slipped below the poverty line years ago. They just set things up so that you make one or two dollars too much to qualify for assistance yet can't afford health insurnace. MEAN time? they pump billions of dolars into forein counties that hate us..bolstering their programs while Americans do without!
755865
no, sorry..\nmedicine is only practiced in what is to be presumed a comassionate, yet ethical and moral way..\n\nif society as a whole could all walk into a doctors office and ask for oxycodone or morpheine for a stubbed toe or headache, we would be walking around with a society full of junkies...\ncertain meds have been tested and proven effective for specific disorders and afflictions, so those are what are acceptable and prescribed..
976005
Probably not in the next 10 years, but there is definitely a conspiracy of dunces  the right and the left in the US working hard to make it happen.\n\nNot with a bang but a whimper.
421752
Probably not.\n\nMost hospitals treat patients regardless of their ability to pay.  Most hospitals will enroll very poor people in Medicare and/or Medicaid.
663022
I would try to make peace and stay out of other countries business unless they make war with us first.  I would fix health care, I would create a more even system so the rich would not rule everything, we have disabled people here in America that can't even afford there medicine. Here in Missouri, Governor Matt Blunt took medicaid away from many disabled, and had at least 175,000,000 that he didn't know what to do with and still wouldn't reinstate the medicaid to the elderly and disabled. I would at least have a concious.
445316
Definitely not.  Nothing in life is free.  Canada's system is not free.  They pay for it with less than state of the art health care, and with higher taxes.  Let's look at what happens.  In Canada, the state dictates how many doctors there will be based on a budget, that is, how many tax dollars that can be spent on it.  They also dictate how much money the doctor will make on any given operation.  If you need an operation and there is a doctor available, you will get it, but chances are, in Canada you will have to go on a waiting list to get it.  You may well die, or suffer other problems waiting for the doctor.  Also, since the state is in control, and not the market, the doctor may not be the best at what he does.  Now let's look at what happens in the United States of America:  A young medical student happens to have a passion for heart surgery.  He has the talent and the knowledge.  He gets a bunch of student loans, and gets his education complete.  He becomes the very best at this specialty, and subsequently charges a lot for it.  He makes a lot of money doing what he loves, and the public pays it because they want the best heart surgeon available when it comes cutting time.  This kid may have elected to go into computers instead of medicine in Canada, because it pays more.  Also, you don't have to wait for a doctor, because the market balances out the supply of medical care with the demand far more efficiently than any government official could.   Please read Ecconomics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt for more insight into supply and demand and the natural, efficient way of regulating ecconomy.  Please also, ask Canadian medical patients who come to America for medical care what they think ?
891358
It would be huge if they could make some progress on universal health care. It ridiculous the amount of money the US spends abroad but has no money to insure it citizens. \n\nI'd like to see America sign on to the Kyoto treaty. One of the things that makes Bush sound like an idiot is him saying "The science isn't in" when it comes to global warming. \n\nOfcourse, there is the Iraq situation, but if the Democrats can't find an easy way out of that soon, I won't really blame them. They just inherited a mess. I believe that there will never be any way that we could all agree that we did the right thing in Iraq. We can't stay forever, but if we stayed until 2020, soon as we left, the place would collapse into civil war and then we'd be "cutting and running" to some people. \n\nI'd also like to see some economic policies that helped some of the rampant economic inequality in this country.\n\nAnd we really need to give equal rights to gays. They as Americans deserve it, no matter what the religious right says about it, and the money it costs to descriminate against them from judicial fees and time to make legislation to keep them down to the amount of money it costs to kick them out of the military and replace them is just ridiculous. Some our kids are going to look back at this situation and say "I can't believe you guys were fighting over that. You didn't realize you had better things to do?"
439623
Health Care is a big problem for me, I have no health care and am a diabetic. I don't take all the medicines that I should to help control it because it is so expensive. It should be controled at worst so that it don't get so out of hand as it is now. I think it might help the research end because there would not be as huge a profit to just treat a disese. It would be better to cure it.
345810
America is the only industrialized nation in the world who does not have a national heath care system. People who aren't wealthy, don't have health insurance, and aren't poor enough to qualify for medicaid, get screwed.\n\nIsrael also has guaranteed housing, while we have homeless.\nDoesn't make sense to me...
194712
I think we stand on the cusp of understanding a great deal more about the human body thanks to the recent break throughs in technics and technology supporting Genetics research. Where that future takes us or it will come is hard to say. Even harder to predict is the sociological impacts these develops could bring about. Whatever happens I am sure medicine will take a giant step forward and lots of the ailments that plague us now will be resolved. The result is people will live longer  and live better.
422291
I'm a Republican, and I've always been against public health care.  I've always thought that if I had to work for a living (and insurance) then everyone should have to.  No freebies.  Well, after actually having to use my insurance, and along with paying deductibles, co-payments, and 20% of all other bills, and having racked up medical bills in excess of $1,500 (which I most definitely cannot afford!), I have changed my mind and would love a public health care system.  No necessarily along the lines of Canada's health care system, but at least something to help those without insurance, and those who are low income.  Maybe have government run clinics set up in each county where anyone that is below a certain income level could receive full healthcare, including MRI, CT Scan, X-Ray, vision, dental, etc at a reduced rate.  Something like that anyway.  I got a bill from the emergency room for $1,400...for two shots.  That's it.  If the government isn't ever going to offer free healthcare to its' citizens, it should at least put a cap on what physicians can charge for their services.  I understand that most of them went to school for 8+ years, but charging $180 for a 5 minute office visit or $1,000 for ONE shot in the emergency room is just plain robbery.
491738
Yes I do. I think America has put it's self backwards with poverty, and the division of rich and poor with this issue. I don't understand why the wealthy want to use this issue to control the population of America anyway when they are looking towards a World market.
1090964
They do have the cures.  Reason they aren't letting us have it is because then people would become well and then the medical industry would take a big hit on profits.  \n\nThere is more money in sick people, why make them better?
410215
It is not the governments job to take care of people! This country was built on the rugged individual and not the nanny state. I would never want the government to think it knows what is best for me. There is nothing stopping people from seeing a doctor and making payments. \nMy father had no insurance for years with us 7 kids and that's how they made it work. We have it so much better in this country than anywhere else in the world. When you grow up you will realize this.
771037
Yes we deserve affordiable health care and drug coverage.  As you say we send billions of dollars to other countries and leave us here back home to dig up enough money for a $75 pill.  Bush stated that he would send billions over to Iraq to aid everyone there to get the health care they need....huh???  What about us.\nWe bring people over here from other countries to have surgeries they cannot get in their countries and they get it for free because we feel sorry for them...huh??? What about the people holding bake sales to help a child in the neighborhood get a heart transplant.\nI could go on an on....rant rant.
327874
Like most people (according to public opinion polls), I believe the US healthcare system is terrible.  The free market approach leaves too many people without adequate coverage...yet another dysfunctional consequence of capitalism.\n\nThere is little way to improve health care within the current economic paradigm, which privileges profit above concern for human health and life.
9651
No.  It's entirely possible that there will still be a program called "Social Security," as names sometimes last longer than things, but over the next few decades technology is going to change so dramatically that very little of the current political and economic paradigm will be able to survive intact.  Social Security is already somewhat anachronistic (it assumes structurally, for instance, that a 65 year old is beyond their useful working life and near death) and as reality continues to change around it there is no question that it will have to be transformed in ways which leave it unrecognizable. <3