getting a house paid has nothing to do with health care unless you can tell me a desease that can only be treated with a new house 
taxes arent insanely high and our health care is brilliant
Hey Habib001, How about hound dog libertarians, got any of those? I wish the USA would get some more political parties. I feel like more folks would vote if we had more choice in what we were voting for. It seems like other counties have parties for everybody. Not us though. If you aren’t a Republican or Democrat here then you are a stray dog.
But we’re £110 billion in the red, my son had to wait 8 months to be diagnosed as epileptic even though he had three ambulance trips to A&E, my daughter has been waiting three years for an operation she should have had when she was 5, a friend of mine has to wait 3 weeks for an ‘emergency’ colonoscopy to discover if she has cancer and just this week, we discover that another baby has been killed by it’s parents because ‘social services’ chose to ignore warnings from their own staff. Yes the NHS is better than it was but, given the increase in spending over the past ten years, is it really as good as it should be?
I was referring to the Social Care in general, not merely the NHS. Given the rate of underage girls getting pregnant, when was the last time you heard of the boyfriend being prosecuted? I’m sorry but I resent paying taxes to support scroungers who never have the slightest intention of contributing to society. How can a 25 year old single mother who has not worked since she was 16 and lives in a free 3 bedroom house down the road from me afford to drive a 3 year old BMW yet my wife and I, who both work full time can barely afford to run a 5 year old Mondeo?
Or gets anything for free for that matter. Even the air you breathe costs some energy.
How does Canada’s universal healthcare work out? I know the taxes are high, but I mean in terms of logistics and efficiency? There is probably very low population density in some areas meanings lots of small hospitals or one big hospital with lots of transportation involved. That’s a factor as well, here in America, it certainly doesn’t help out the costs involved. Sure, the coasts have high population density, but other parts don’t.
I’m not sure about Europe (UK?), but overall, I’d think their population density is pretty high.
Either way, there are definitely a lot of practical barriers to getting universal healthcare. Maybe someone knows of a solution?
Wow, that sounds pretty out of hand. How did that come to pass? New law? How did the justify subsidizing houses like that?
Well it does not take much reading to see that they have been going through their own “crisis” with long waiting lines, etc.. Plus the fact that thousands of Canadians travel as far south as Florida for healthcare also says something. At one point the state of Tennesssee had more MRI machines than all of Canada.
I wish I was smart enough to figure out how to get everyone top quality affordable health care - I would give you the answer for free.
As a Canadian I know several people who had to go to the U.S. for care. It isn’t a bad system as long as you don’t need it.
MRI waits are crazy here so I’ve heard(I’ve never needed one). Part of the reason many states have more MRI machines than Canada is malpractice suits. If a doctor in the U.S. doesn’t run all the diagnostic tests in a timely manner he risks getting sued. That doesn’t happen in Canada so they make you wait weeks for an MRI. Enjoy your future system.:o
As I see it, there can never be a happy medium. Either you have a state run system and accept that funding is going to be restricted or you have a system of private hospitals and accept that some people are going to fall through the net.
Going back to the origin of this thread, Habib makes a good point. For those of you who have seen the film ‘Love Actually’, the relationship between the President and the Prime Minister was very close to the truth, a lot of brits would say that Bush demanded things from the UK, gave nothing in return and Blair didn’t have the balls to stand up to him, if this continues under the new administration then we may as well become the 51st State and what an irony that would be
From what I understand of the Belgium healthcare system (and respectfully its not much) you need to pay into social security system. Belgium’s taxation system has been described as one the highest in the EU.
Taxation in Belgium - Expatica
From above link:
“Expatriates and Belgian citizens alike within the system suffer from one of the highest taxation rates in the EU.
In 2006, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed that Belgium has the highest tax burden - including social security - in Europe at 55.4% for a single earner. This compares to an average 42% in Europe. An expatriate working in Belgium will typically be liable to Belgian income tax. Additionally, property tax, gift and succession duty may be relevant. For most circumstances there is no capital gains taxes or wealth tax for individuals in Belgium, thus pushing the burden firmly onto the employee.”
Access denied in the Belgian healthcare system
I guess the illegals though don’t really count. In the USA, that’s one of our problems, we allow illegals healthcare and I guess we could just turn them away too, but then the world would be angry with our intolerance.
My reason for posting this, is not to disrespect you MeDieViL, but every country in the world suffers problems. Regardless of how good things might appear, there are no perfect systems. The USA is a built on capitalism and I believe it is a great system. It’s socialized welfare that destroys lives. A ghetto is a prime example of how welfare works.
I know you aren’t saying put people on welfare, but welfare recipients have better healthcare than most families that work. The real underlying questions though still remain, who pays for it all? You pay in social security in Belgium, so that means that there are hundreds of thousands who dont get healthcare. Sorry, but even in the USA the unemployed get healthcare.
A search on Google reveals disturbing facts about Belgiums healthcare system as it does on any nations. A truly “Brilliant” healthcare system is one that treats everyone, regardless of if they are illegal, unemployed, never paid social security taxes, whatever.
As I’ve said earlier in this thread too, this is an exploratory campaign to discover whether I should run for Supreme Steve of the World 
LOL. Well when that happens the first thing we’re gonna have to change is that driving on the wrong side of the road thing … lol. 
No problem, just as long as we get rid of those ridiculous 55mph and 65mph limits. Oh, and teach you lot to drive stick shifts
I agree with that and i also agree with getting rid of electoral system
i always felt unless you live in a battleground state it truly does not matter and most people for example in states like NY and CA your vote does not count, but if for example if I was a republican and moved to say Florida my vote would have more meaning.
I know many people who did not vote this election who live in NY becuase they knew NY would automatically go to Obama and felt why waste their time, same as myself. Personally I was not for either candidate and normally vote republican but tired of seeing my state always go to democrat and tired of going to the polls waiting in long lines and feel like my vote doesn’t mean a thing
now if we go to a popular system, I bet a lot more people would go out and vote who never voted before because every single vote does matter no matter what state you are from becuase your vote really does matter and it doesn’t matter if you vote republican, democrat, or some other party
if i remember correctly kerry would have won in 2000 election becuase he won the popular vote, then again if we did it by popular vote who knows what would have happen as well becuase more would have voted
I agree 100%! The electoral college is an obsolete mechanism tht’s long outserved it’s purpose. In the horse and buggy days it made lots of sense: pick a couple of people and let them make the long hard haul to Washington to cast their votes for the masses.
In todays world, it makes no sense and can only create conflict. Imagine another race where the popular vote went against the electoral college and we end up with a third president (hmm, possibly even a fourth after the 2000 election), in office that the people voted against! Now imagine that a wide margin of the popular vote went to the defeated candidate.
I would take it in the other direction. The founders placed a lot more emphasis on the states and the house of reps. The state legislatures elected the Senators and chose Electors.
There was a US Representative for about every 50,000 Americans. The power that should now be distributed among some 6000 US Representatives is concentrated among 400+ people. With todays technology they needn’t leave their home town to conduct business either.
The Senate is a rubber stamp body for either the president or the house or both instead of being the state governments’ federal representative.
The last peg is that the federal government should only collect taxes from state governments not the people directly. A head tax based on a states per capita gross economic output would be the modern progressive model. This would encourage the states themselves to keep their own taxation flexible and competitive.
This would put the federal government back into it’s proper role as a mediator between the states and the American peoples ambassador to the world. “E.Pluribus freakin’ Unum” instead of “USA INC.”
Alas this tidy utopia must await fruition of my world domination plan.
i do find it ironic that obama the man who touted change throughout his campaign and said he was an outsider who promised he can change Washington picked a VP who been in washington longer then almost everyone there, and is now picking his administration all filled with people longer then I bet many are alive on this board
Lets see possibly hillary, now Daschle, attorney general will be Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff and another veteran of the Clinton White House
so far new fresh faces, do you relaly think people who have been in congress throughout this entire mess will be able to fix the problems we are facing now? We need new people. Not the same old crap from the same old politicians.
it really does not surprise me, a politician will say anything and do anything to win office and once he gets in will go back on his campaign promises. This is just a start.
I did not fall for the nice charismatic speeches that obama had put for his show my guess is he had on a alot of A314 on during his speeches. LOL
For those of you who know anything of British History, a quote from Oscar Wilde-
“the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions was Guy Fawkes”
I guess politicians are the same the world over and haven’t changed much over the centuries
LOL nope…that is why i never voted…i am a pessimist
@Diamond, Guy Fawkes gets regular coverage around here.
@Denec, what choice does he have? The only people who will submit to the body cavity searches are the people who work on K street…everybody else has too much self respect to work in the environment we’ve created in Washington.
now he got hillary clinton…as secratary of state LOL
more change…yeah right..
the only good thing to come out of that is at least she will not be the NY senator anymore
can you see i love politicians???
i don’t listen to talk radio but i bet rush limbaugh is having a field day i can only imagine LOL, his ratings probably went super high for the next 4 years