A Canadian Doctor Diagnoses U.S. Healthcare

Now, I have tried to research our healthcare system here in the U.S. I have read books, seen documentaries (such as "Sicko"), etc. and for whatever reason, can't seem to grasp it. I just find it that confusing. That doesn't sound like a good thing. But this article from the L.A. Times is one of the better, more informative ones. A Canadian doctor "diagnoses" U.S. healthcare, and compares it to the Canadian version. His viewpoint isn't all peaches and cream with his own system; he is critical of it, and points out some flaws that show that it isn't necessairly an ideal system in contrast to ours. But it is still better.

I think that health care is one of those issues that I have just given up on. I do feel that it needs to be improved, if not totally scrapped and replaced with something more steamlined, efficient, and centered on the health of our citizens rather than profits. But there are too many vested interests intent on maintaining what has been the status quo, and those interests are entrenched in the corridors of power, so whatever reform we see, if any, will be tepid and won't have much of an effect. Also, our commercial media (telvision and, to a smaller degree, newspapers) dumbs down the discussion to a level where a coherent debate on health care is impossible. Health care is a complex issue that can't be boiled down into a sound bite, except by the status quo who maintain it's "socialist". I have talked to people, who dare I say would be in their interst to call for much-needed reforms in the health care system, who maintain that we cannot change it due to what they heard on Fox News or CNN, without realizing that the person who they heard railing against Canada's health care is likely a lobbyist or some other representative of an HMO or some other body devoted to not seeing change realized.