A Facebook experiment in selling yourself. (HT: Willy Franzen) (Earlier)
When beds run out in Canada, laboring women get airlifted across the border.
A capital-gains-tax-hike calculator (for those who have any gains left).
How humanoid do you like your robot?
Photo: aussiegall
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Ok,
Considering that half my family is American and I am a long term amerophile(?) read the following with the knowledge that it may seem harsh but it is said with love:
The second link kind of reminds me of North Korean propoganda. They have a tendency to just print the bad news about the US (6,000 fired from General Motors!) without context so it looks like everywhere except for North Korea is in a state of chaos.
I have to defend the Canadian medical system. I don’t think that anyone said that it was perfect but most Americans seem to have this panglosian tautology about everything. “If it is American it must be the best” and everywhere else, here be dragons.
The context in this case is that while it is embarrassing, at least she was taken care of. I wonder how many people in the US are denied treatment because they don’t have insurance. Because she looks middle class do you think that she could have afforded the cost? Perhaps her insurance wouldn’t cover it in a market system. What do you say then. Too bad?
Lest you think that I am some kind of raving socialist government worker, I have to tell you that I make my money trading and have made a quite healthy living from the “animal spirits” of the market. I enjoy the benefits of a free market system and wouldn’t change it for the world. I just see the limitations of applying a “market” strategy to everything. It seems that ideologically speaking, most Americans have is the “hammer” of the market so every problem looks like it is in need of some judicious pounding.
If you Americans want to have a market solution to your health care just do it and do it for whatever ideological reasons that you want, just leave Canada out of it thank you very much.
Eighty five percent of Canadians like their health care system. Is it because they are benighted souls who have yet to have the scales drop from their eyes or because they look south and think what a nightmare.
“When beds run out in Canada…”
Is a blogger with atrocious grammar pointing to an article hosted by an insurance company. Both countries have individual horror stories. I would think Freakonomics would be beyond proof-by-example.
“When beds run out in Canada…”
I worked in NJ for a year and I made US$50,000. I now make CDN$48,500 in Canada and my net income is HIGHER! Where does the author get 50-60% in taxes? Our health care system is not perfect but it is fair. The US health care system is an abomination.
At least the Canadian system cares enough about people to ensure that everyone is insured. Then, in the rare instance when capacity is short, patients may be moved to where there is capacity. If everyone had insurance in the US, this would not be south of the border. The flow would need to be reversed!
I doubt that this site for “health care” insurance criminals will leave this up for long:
“Why does every other advanced economy have some form of universal health care? The #1 reason is to keep the type of criminal scumbags who set up this website from picking everyone’s pocket while they pretend to insure them. They are actually using much of the “insurance” collected to create a bureaucracy to deny coverage.
McCain is in their pay.”
I’m extremely shocked and disappointed that a near-educational resource such as the Freakonomics Blog has such a rediculously uneducated article as the Canadian Health Care blog article.
The sheer fact that it takes a micro situation and assumably applies it to the macro scenario is utterly preposterous and flies in the face of even basic economic theory.
You should be ashamed to even be giving it a platform.
phillr.blogspot.com
Just wanted to say Thank You! for the link.
Well, I looked in vain through search engines for any reference to “airlift Canada Bozeman Montana”. The only matches were the article referred to or other articles that were identical. You think that if there were “many news stories” at least one of them would have popped up in a search.
Do the wonderful people at Freakonomics admit this is a hoax, or do I have to e-mail Snopes on this? Think about it – Why Bozeman Montana? I looked at a map and not only is Bozeman not even the closest city to Calgary (there are two of similar size that are closer), Seattle is about the same distance. Why airlift women in labour? Wouldn’t being in even an underequipped hospital while giving birth be preferrable to being in an air ambulance? Do all Canadian expats in San Antonio have a better handle on the state of our health care system than people who live here do? Why not even one link to a news story on the issue?
I will bet the bloggers on this site a Cornish pastie I’m right!