Just wanted to jump in here. I'm an American who's lived abroad for the past several years. In South America, Southeast Asia, etc. I've always been able to see doctors at private hospitals, when I want, quite cheaply, because much of the cost is subsidized. In New Zealand, I was blown away at the fact that I went to a doctor's office (strep throat), filled out one form, got seen within twenty minutes, and it was completely free. I couldn't believe it.

I'm scared of getting sick here in the US. I have some of the most expensive private coverage money can buy here, and it's still worthless. I had to go to an emergency room (private hospital) here in LA, a couple months ago. I had, it seemed, something lodged in my esophagus. It was not a particularly busy night at the ER. They kept me waiting in pain for six hours. A doctor came in and looked at me for 20 seconds, asked me no questions, wrote a prescription for antibiotics (huh?) and sent me home. The bill from the emergency room was $1900. My insurance company would only cover half of it. Over the next three days I had to go through doctors and eventually get an upper GI and then an endoscopy. The insurance company told me they wouldn't cover anaesthesia. They said it wasn't absolutely necessary to be under anaesthesia, when having a f*cking tube shoved into your stomach. The bill for all that, after the insurance covered part of it, came out to around $6000.

I did the math. For the time it took to get treatment, and the cost, I could have bought a first-class round trip ticket to Thailand, Britain, Cuba, Argentina, New Zealand, or any other country with decent socialized medicine; paid the extra cost for first-rate medical treatment in a private hospital room at; and been back to healthy sooner and cheaper than I was.

And I am a best-case scenario in America; I have insurance that only about 10% of people in this country can afford.

Will one of the republicans please explain to me what about this system is worth saving, or how "DMV care" could possibly be any worse than what we have right now? Because I'm convinced that the only people who are against socializing medicine around here are the insurance companies, and the fools who are dumb enough to believe their fearmongering, lying threats.