As I understand it, a few days ago Sarah Palin, the GOP's 2008 VP candidate, confessed that when she was younger, her family used to go to Canada for healthcare because it was the only decent healthcare available to them where they lived. (not far from Alberta)
I was not too surprised to see almost no coverage about it in the media. Not many Americans realize this, but according to FAIR, the MSM in the USA has informally agreed among themselves, to not cover ANY news about single payer, because its popularity when it is covered is embarrassing given our lack of it.
As we all know, the GOP and many Democrats oppose the European/Australian/Taiwanese/Japanese affordable universal health care models, and remain in favor of the American/Third World model that denies sick people healthcare if they can not pay whatever is asked of them, with no limits on provider or insurer price gouging.
It would have been appopriate for Palin to have said some good words about canadian healthcare's availability for herself and her family, but she was very brief, I suspect her mentioning it was just to defuse it as a potential future issue.
Why are the political elite in the US so against any real change in the system that denies the poor even basic curative care, while languishing expensive treatment after treatment on the well to do? Even the US public television PBS
seems to be in a moral grey zone in which reporters have to be forced to endorse systems they know can't work. (Thats what they did to T.R. Reid, saying "its in your contract".)
There are no limits on price gouging in the Democrats "health insurance reform" bill, scheduled to take effect between 2014 and 2017, if passed.
Two-thirds of all Americans support Medicare for All, in the Canadian Medicare style- (Medicare is the name of their national healthcare program for all Canadians, from birth until old age)
Significantly, the more the single payer aspect of Medicare for All is explicitly specified here, in national poll questions, the higher the poll scores, indicating national support for single payer healthcare for all, paid for by progressive taxes, is very high. Single Payer is our only hope to make quality affordable health care, with no extortion, available to all Americans within our lifetimes.
In general, Americans do not realize that the new bait-and-switch- (replacing public option for this second phase) "Medicare buy-in" is yet another giveaway to health insurance companies, because it would allow them to cherry pick still more, raising the costs for everyone who was still forced to buy insurance (or lose everything if they get sick so that they qualified for the public option for he poor, Medicaid.)
The working people of the USA also don't realize that something as insignificant as a small bonus at work could unintentionally end up exposing them to huge unplanned costs under a welfare/subsidy program as envisioned in the Senate bill.
Curative Care - Definition of Curative Care:
Curative care refers to treatment and therapies provided to a patient with an intent to improve symptoms and cure the patient's medical problem.
European medical systems prioritize Curative Care- and basic curative care is always fully covered in all plans of all kinds, and is never a cost-plus extra that allows people who cannot pay extra fees to fall through the cracks or lose their coverage when they are forced to pay extra fees they have not budgeted enough money for.
European plans do not extort money from sick people.
The Democrats seem to be siding more with the European right, structurally, perhaps seeing the universal European models that prioritize curative care as mandatory, and not optional, as too generous to working people and the middle class.