Jack, the problem is, no one here in the States--or at least none of the candidates--is proposing the systems you hold up as models. Don't show it to me in Canada or Britain or Sweden or anywhere else. Show me the proposal for THIS COUNTRY. Show it to my elected representatives. If I like it, I'll tell them I think it's a good idea. If enough of them like it and the president also likes it, then we'll have it. But the fact that no one of political significance is talking about what you seem to want them to talk about means it won't happen here any time soon. Maybe you'd better run for office.

King, some of those 47 million ARE expressing their choice--by not paying for coverage they could afford. Why? Because they're gambling they won't get sick, and because they know they'll get treated in the emergency ward if they do. Some certainly can't afford it. But once again, we're talking social programs, not freedom. A country can be free, yet without socialized retirment programs, socialized medicine, etc. Cuba is an example of a country that isn't free, hasn't held an election for about 50 years, but offers its citizens socialized medicine.

King, I spent the summer of 1980 on active duty at Ft McCoy, WI. We were one of three destinations for about 100,000 Cuban refugees that came over in the "boat lift". The other two were Ft. Chaffee, AR and Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA. I don't know about you, but I'd have a feeling something was pretty wrong with the good old USA if, all of a sudden, 3 million people were to pick up and leave because they couldn't stand living under Bush. (That'd be the rough equivalent of 100,000 Cubans, given the difference in population.) And of course thousands of Cubans had already fled, long before the 1980 boat lift. Would you think things were just fine in Canada, King--govt health care and all--if 350,000 Canadians were to pack up and leave all at once?

To some people, free speech is more important than free health care. That may be why our founding fathers put freedom of speech in the Constitution (the very first amendment, in fact), but not free health care.