Gollee, Jack baby

Let's start by stating the obvious: Where I agree with you, there's not much point in my commenting.

Whereas Canada's system might "suck" (you have to take anything coming from Townhall with a pillar of salt), it cannot be denied that our system sucks mightily. We pay more than twice for health care than other advanced countries, and it would be in our best interest to put the other 8% of our GDP into more productive endeavors.

I am a firm believer in emulating what works. I study Tiger Woods' and Ben Hogan's swing because they do it better than me, and I want to play a better round of golf. The same goes for the health care systems in France and Australia (I have spent considerable time there), where the people have longer life expectancies, and the costs of health care delivery are considerably lower. Scoreboard.

By way of example, why is it that we pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world? Medicare has more recipients than Canada has Canadians. We should tell Big Pharma that we will impose a 92% excise tax on the excess that they charge for their drugs (the effective alternative to nationalization) at the wholesale level here over the amount that they charge on average in Canada, France, and/or Aus. Why on Earth should we subsidize prescription costs for the rest of the world? It's insanity!!!

Come ON, Laura! What's wrong with the Wal-Mart business model, as applied to medicine? You rightards just LOVE Wal-Mart ... or, as George Strait might put it, "I got friends with low wages...."

The von Mises business model is an abject failure, as evidenced by the demise of GM. All throughout history, every industrial power has had the good sense to protect their industrial base. Alexander Hamilton was spot-on in 1791 (are you at least competent enough to know what I am referring to here?); the Chinese are smart enough to recognize it. We elect droolers like Bush (well, sort-of), and deserve to fail.

Rightards are, for the most part, colossally stupid. Thomas Jefferson was brilliant enough to recognize that it is unwise to fall so madly in love with your dogma that it keeps you from making optimal decisions; where would America be without the Louisiana Purchase? Here, rational conservatives must come to terms with the fact that an unwavering devotion to Adam Smith in a world where his simplistic view of economics no longer serves as anything but an analytical tool is irrational, and must be eschewed.

The fundamental problem with GM was in the fact that it was saddled with legacy costs which the other industrialized nations chose to bear as nations. We had to sacrifice GM on the altar of your doctrine of extreme social Darwinism. You maintain that the little people are expendable, except when they are in the womb. You killed GM -- you and your doctrinnaire religious rightard social Darwinist fellows. Just is, dear.

As for nationalized health care, I would make it an absolute requirement that our Congresscritters cannot opt out of it. You want a system that works? That will guarantee it.