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Permalink Reply by clivephoto on September 21, 2011 at 5:18pm

I live in the UK where we have a national health service. It's not perfect, it never could be, but I can't imagine how it must be to live in a country were a broken arm or leg could cost you your house and a serious illness without insurance means little or no treatment. 

 

Smokers and drinkers will put more strain on the health service but if you add up the extra taxes they pay on their booze & fags I bet they'll come out being owed far more than they take. 

 

As far as obesity is concerned I'd say the burger and fast food chains and processed food manufacturers have a lot more to answer for than than the poor saps they peddle their over salty, trans-fat saturated sugary wares to. Now that is criminal. 

 

What about anyone who plays football or ice hockey? Or rides a motorbike. Or drives too fast or carelessly. Or rides a mountain bike fast over rough terrain. Or gets pregnant. If there was a god he wouldn't tolerate that kind of behaviour! You'd expect a really intelligent designer to make everything easily serviceable or replaceable, surely? 

 

I used to work for an American company and I can tell you, I have no idea how so many people can live such crappy lives in jobs they hate for fear of not having medical insurance nor how so many people can survive without it. I am stunned that they can continue to allow things to carry on that way, talk about turkeys voting for christmas. 

 

Be well, you sure need to be. 

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Permalink Reply by Jedi Wanderer on September 21, 2011 at 5:44pm

Wow, Clive, I guess sometimes it takes someone from the outside to let us know what the objective reality is. I never thought about the fact that smokers and drinkers pay taxes on what they consume. Were we to have national healthcare, we could simply enforce taxation which would at least cover the additional costs such people incur to the system by taxing them directly through their consumption - brilliant! And you are so right, "Big Food", or whatever the hell they are called, is certainly complicit in the degraded health of Americans. Do UKers (now, what are THEY called?) eat any better than we do over here?

 

I spent one year at UPS destroying my body working like a pack-rat just so my family could have healthcare. In the end we decided to just leave the US and make our fortunes elsewhere, and it was a terrific decision. Americans are overworked, underpaid, and miserable, and yet somehow proud of it. Reminds me of a town hall or something of old GWB's where a poor woman started by saying that she works 3 jobs, and Bush cut her off and said how wonderful and what a land of opportunity we live in and some such garbage, completely missing the point that if the poor woman could only work less to make ends meet, she surely would. You are so right clive, Americans are (what's the opposite of blissfully?) unaware of how to live in a better society, and so are inexplicably loyal to those who would uphold the status quo. How did we get to the point where being intelligent is a derrogatory term and progress is frowned upon?

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Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on September 21, 2011 at 6:48pm

I've wondered that for years, guys.

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Permalink Reply by annet on September 21, 2011 at 9:10pm

indeed,we are trapped in plato's cave.  and thanks clive for the excellent free pneumonia treatment i got when i took sick during a visit to england.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Becca on September 21, 2011 at 9:22pm

I'm hoping I can manage to get out of the US. Where did you escape to? I spent a year in Germany while I was at university and for the first time in my life not only experienced what it was like to have healthcare but experienced a working mostly efficient healthcare system where no one has to worry about a health issue ruining their lives.

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Permalink Reply by Jedi Wanderer on September 22, 2011 at 7:52am

The Middle East. It's not something I would actually advocate for others to do, really I want to be in Germany or somewhere in Western Europe, but I ended up getting really lucky over there. It's not something I wanted to do for long though. I have been all over the Middle East, and there are some truly beautiful, wonderful places over there, only not where I lived. I have as yet never been to Western Europe, excluding a few layovers in Heathrow and Paris, and it is still my dream to settle down there for the rest of my life.

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