My 2 cents – I find it interesting that everyone is commenting about the “ugliness” of the comments from this post. I don’t think it’s ugly to disagree. It’s American to have different opinions and allow people to speak about them.

Although I think there is probably a better forum to discuss your disagreements:)

woohoo for Obama!! can’t wait til Tuesday!

i know that the Spanish health care system may very well not be perfect. but i guess my point is that even an imperfect model is an improvement over what’s happening here in the US. gotta start somewhere and even if it’s not perfect off the bat it can be tweaked and improved over time.

if you read the study about the “happiest place on earth” you know that the study found that “a nation’s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels.” the #1 nation on the list turned out to be Denmark. Danish people pay some of the highest income taxes of any nation. so perhaps it’s time to re-examine this aversion to paying taxes and re-direct that energy toward ensuring that our government spends that revenue on pertinent matters.

I completely agree that something needs to change. Our system is broken, and it fails many people. However, simply changing how we handle insurance coverage,while ignoring all of the other problems with our system, is kind of like treating a compound fracture with a bandaid.

I don’t know anything about the Spanish model of health care, but just today (Sunday) CBS did a story on the French health care system, which has been hailed as “the best in the world.” The info provided by CBS can be substantiated by the case study information on the biggovhealth.org website. It might be more accurate to take a look at this system, since it is a hybrid of a government system and private care, which is what Obama supports.

First, medical education is free in France. In the US, medical education can cost up to around $400,000.

Second, the average pay for doctors in France is $55,000 per year. If you offered that kind of pay to American doctors, who spends up to 15 years of their lives in undergraduate study, med school, and specialization/residency, generally ending their education with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and then being required to carry an exorbitant amount of liability insurance annually due to the fact that Americans are the most litigious people in the world, there would be ABSOLUTELY NO incentive for people to become doctors in America.

Third, even with the low pay for doctors, the French health care system is billions of dollars in debt, suggesting that there needs to be a restructuring of “the greatest health care system in the world.” If the French system is “the best” and is still billions of dollars in debt, there’s absolutely no way our government can do better, when they’ve shown themselves completely incompetent and incapable of handling the government-run programs that we already have, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA health care system.

Again, I agree that we need a major overhaul. Unfortunately, Obama’s plan simply won’t cut it, and it doesn’t even touch on the CAUSES of the problems we see today.