I think the first thing we have to notice is that all over the world, regardless of which country or culture, there could be free health care for everyone, and enough food for everyone, if we stopped wasting money on weapons.

I noticed that in the US (I might be wrong in this) those who oppose universal health care complain about its cost and those same people said nothing when the likes of Haliburton was overcharging the American public for the war effort. Money wasted in weapons and war is money that is not going to health care or education or more useful things. The $38,000 toilet in some army barracks points to a wasteful war economy and a general lack of concern for what happens to the poor of the world when so much of our money goes into war.

Anybody who says that somebody nearly died in Canada because of the health care system here is just using excuses to undermine the health care system. Living here in Canada I can say that we have one of the best health care systems in the world. It is universally available and everyone, rich or poor, can have excellent care. The big problem here is that when the Canadian version of Reaganomics hit Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, the government cut funding to hospitals. A lot of medical staff lost their jobs and many hospital beds closed down. Now the problem is that those beds need to be restored, and the government is trying to weasel its way out of paying for it. Of course, they have no problem wasting billions in Afghanistan!

Because there are less hospital beds, people have to wait for operations and other medical procedures. I wish those people would go developing countries where being poor means you will never be able to afford an operation at all. If those people who complain received a bill for the actual costs of the operation, they would die of a heart attack. It says something when a $20,000 operation is given to you for only $42 per month. No wonder medical insurers want to avoid the universal health care system like a plague.