Nestor, we'll probably have to agree to disagree on a few points. I am interested to hear your thoughts on Govt sponsored health care though.
You guys probably should go with a government run health care system cuz that's what we got in Canada, and I don't see any major problems with it.
The way it works is this: Everybody over 18 gets a health card with a number on it. If you get sick or something happens to you, you go to the hospital and the nurse takes down all your symptoms and puts them into a computer. She also "triage's" you to determine how urgently you need attention. If you're young and healthy and you're coming to see a doctor because of a slight cough, well you can pretty well expect to be put last in the priority ladder and wait pretty much all day to get seen by someone. On the other hand, if you're lucky enought to get driven to the hospital in a nice new ambulance with flashing lights, you go straight to the front of the line and get to be the first one the nice doctor sees. And, for everything in between, you get triage'd somewhere in between. And, the next time you go to the hospital, they can punch in the number from your health care card and find out your medical history, because apparantly that's important in treating you now. From that perspective, it's simple as mud, and that's prolly the key to saving some money.
The system seems to work OK here, and so it'll prolly work there.
PS: I live in Canada, but it would be a stretch to call me a Canadian. I'm what you would probably call a space alien,... but I live in Canada. In my view, that's not quite the same thing as being "Canadian". Canadians make better beer, better hockey and better abductees. They have something called the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights) in Canada, so it's no big deal for Canadians to see lights in the sky, and they don't get all twisted out of shape over it. And, that makes my job a little easier.
Yeah, go with the government run health care program. It can be annoying waiting all day to see a doctor, but it's a lot better than facing a hefty medical bill if you have to have an operation or something and don't have insurance to pay for it.
Also, they have a law here in Canada that limits the cost of prescription drugs, and THAT was the reason that prescription drugs imported into the US from Canada were cheaper, not because they were any less safe.