My husband is American who has spent a lot of time living in both Canada and the US, and he agrees that the US health care system is a disaster and he’d take Canada’s system over the US system in a heart-beat. He has family who have directly experienced the horrors of a US system that puts profits before patients. More than just minor “tweaks” are necessary when so many people risking losing everything they’ve ever worked for b/c they are uninsured or underinsured (and could be dropped by their insurance company at any moment for some obscure reason). That’s just wrong. The insurance companies, by the very nature of their business, will always do whatever they can to take more money from people and offer less in return. That’s not an issue of capitalism or gov’t interference, that’s just immoral for a great country like the USA.

Chuck – I totally agree that the US grew to its position as a global super-power b/c of the focus on individualism and free market. I agree that Capitalism is essential for growth and prosperity, but pure Capitalism doesn’t work any better than pure Socialism. There needs to be a balance – a Capitalist society with social safety nets to ensure the greater good of society. After all, greed is at the core of human nature and when you only care about yourself and ignore the poor and disadvantage, that group of people grows even more hostile and resentful and resorts to violence to get what they want and need. Look at Africa for an example of “every man for himself”. I think it’s obvious that the rest of the industrialized world (many countries that have standards of living just as high as the US) understands that in a civilized nation, health care should be a RIGHT, not a privilege…..just like access to quality, affordable education, safe communities, reliable roads and highways, etc.

It’s the individual doing what’s best for themselves that make capitailism so strong. Work you ass off and reap the profit. Sit on your ass and you go homeless. It’s an effective combination.

The true brilliance shows through when people combine this with genuine kindness and altruism for those who are less fortunate. It’s this balance between do what’s best for yourself and helping others is the delicate part. Too much for yourself and you become everything that is promoted to be evil and wrong. To much giving o others and you lose interest in succeeding since the wold is a bottomless pit of need. But this is also an indivdual choice. Which means you have a bell curve of evil to good. I believe the middle of that curve is mostly good. JUst look at how capitialist societies give whenever another country is in distress.

Many Americans think that what’s wrong with our health care system can be tweaked with a few new rules and some common sense. The current government wants to make dramatic sweeping changes to whole thing. Personally I prefer carefully considered small tweaks. Obama and followers go around lamenting that 50 million people in American have no health care, well OK, but 250 million do, and most of those are ok this the care they have. Keep in mind that out of the 50 million without healthcare, about 30-40 million are illegal aliens. Strangely they always seem to get medical care, and for free.

I think some Americans understand the British system and the leanings of it’s leaders. And as much as we genuinely love our cousins across the pond, we don’t want the UK’s political system or the increased intrusion of government into our lives.

That means we really don’t like government getting involved with our leading businesses. A good example is what just happened with the auto companies. In October of 2008 the government and press were peeing all over themselves with worry about the three major auto manufacturers. The US dumped tens of billions into the companies to keep them afloat. Everyone I knew with the least bit of business sense was outraged. Seems mean, but it must be done. Because that’s not how a healthy capitalist society works. You let the weak companies go under. One of two things can happen. The companies assets will be sold off to the highest bidder and the good parts of the the dead companies will live on. Who wouldn’t’ want the tooling and rights to the small block Chevy V8. Or the Corvette, or name dozens of other bit and pieces. The other possibility is to let the companies fail and reorganize under bankrupcy protection.

But no. The utter lack of understanding by our congress, the Bush administration, then the Obama administration funneled tens of billions into failing corporations that had no chance. We just delay the inevitable, we actually streched out the suffering of those who lost their work. People would have been far better of it the the billions would have been used to help the unemployed directly while waiting for the businesses to sort themselves out.

6-8 months later GM and Chrysler failed, filed for bankruptcy protection and then emerged from that. The government bailouts did not work. In the end the capitalist system worked as it should have. Things are slowly getting better now, but not because of government meddling, but because of American spirit.