[suzzer99]

I have a feeling one way or another you get taken care of. You get rid of all your $$ before the insurance runs out, then you wind of up on disability/medicaid whatever and your health ins. is covered.

The interesting thing to me is that when you talk to people from other Western countries that you think are more socialist or whatever, actually in the long run things end up running about the same.

IE in Sweden someone making about $80k/yr is taxed 45%, max tax is 50%. Here it's 38%/38% at that level. Not *that* gigantic of a difference.

In Canada you get universal healthcare but it is slow and kind of sucks. Rich people have a way around this. In the US anyone with decent insurance gets pretty close to rich people care. Poor people have to wait in line and get crappy care, but they don't get turned away. In LA, anyone who's poor gets on a Blue Cross HMO and has pretty sweet care. In Cuba I'm sure it sucks for the most part unless you're "rich" by whatever standard they use.

I'm just saying things are often not as different as you think. I'm all for universal health care here, as I think the biggest problem with our system is people who are afraid to go to work and lose their state-covered health care. My friend has diabetes. She got a job with a small company and her health insurance was going to be like 3/4 of her salary. That's nuts.