United States

The answer is simple Mark.
Greed.
The corporate heads and doctors hide in their gated communities, while the hospitals go dangerously under staffed all for the sake of profit.
Mind you I am a believer in the free market. But the checks and balences apparently are gone and a just profit has given way to greed at the risk of human life and safety.

Mark, thanks. They've been talking for years in the USA about setting up a national health care system. And then we keep hearing about the horrors of the English health care system, and other horrible national health care systems. What is your opinion on the English health care system? Is it as bad as the opponents of national health care say it is here in the USA? One of Obama's promise is to set up a national health care system. If it's done properly it could be a real help to our economy. If it's not done properly it will only add to the economic downturn we are in now. Later...

Mark,
The United States is an incredibly versatile place , with the best and worst of everything. We have no less then 5 spheres of government over us, besides the feds, there is our respective states, counties, and cities or townships, but the worst, from the standpoint of we landowners, are the cursed school districts! (I work over a month every year to subsidise the school in the unjust ripoff known as "real estate tax".)

I'd prefer to educate the little buggers myself!

as ol' Mr. Zappa sang back in the 60's,
"Mr. America, walk on by, your schools that do not teach......"

I still like it here,so I'll stop whinnin' now,
Howlin'

Hello Howlin and Fisherman Bob,
I know there are many angles and arguments and it is quite hard to take a completely objective view on something like our dear old NHS; I though am a great believer in it.
You might be perfectly well and strong for forty years or something and never even think of going near a hospital, or needing to maintain an insurance policy... then suddenly wham, something goes wrong in your fifties or sixties and the NHS takes you in and sorts it out.
When I was in for a small opperation a few years ago a foreign guy appeared in the bed beside me who was travelling the world when someing burst inside him or something, and the NHS took him in and had surgeons open him up and a week or so later he was back on his journey... and he got fed well while he rested up in bed... and it didn't cost him a penny.
he said he loved the British NHS!
Then just a couple of years back I got a vile spinal infection and screamed all the time, and was in for eight weeks; one night a young kid apeared in a bed nearby with a broken leg; he could barely speak English and was clearly scared to tell us where he came from; turned out he was a young Iraqi, and I forget his name now, but he became or ward maskot, and got treated like royalty... typical arse about face British thinking!
When I was young I think I can remember a bit of a rumpus about women flying in from the USA to have their babies in the NHS... was that correct?
I guess the argument against free beneficial services like welfare, is that people will go and apply for it when they don't need it or deserve it... but surely hospitals and health is the one thing where people will only try to have it done if it needs doing, so something that fixes you when you are ill and unable to do it yourself, or pay for it yourself seems a great idea to me.
I cannot really be totally objective guys, because my life has been saved by the NHS... firemen cut me free, a helicopter took me to hospital, and after a week unconscious in intensive care I was back on the slow road to recovery for two months on an NHS ward... then three more opperations, two were in the world's top eye hospital (Moorfields) in London, where I could even have applied for travel costs on the train to get there, but didn't.
I suppose one might say, 'but you could have done the same with a private insurance plan', but why tear down something that works so well just to make it private and excluding to anyone who cannot afford to keep up their insurance payments?

Sorry for banging on like this... I had never really thought about it much before, and I didn't realise how much I loved, and owed to the NHS... it treats a person when they need treating, and at that moment in time it costs them nothing... during the healthy phases of their life they are of course paying into it via tax.
It seems the simplest way to do it to me.
Cheers guys,
Mark...................

ps. My best wishes are also with the President elect Obama... I think Gordon Brown and he will get on well... Prime Minister Brown is scarecely known in the world yet, but he is quite a decent guy really.