"But, I'd rather get a heart bypass in Boston, near where I live, than Delhi."

Actually, you can get first-class major surgery at a good hospital for a lot less, including the trip to India, than at home. An increasing number of Americans are taking advantage of this.

"If I need an MRI, I doubt I can get one for $10 (500 rupees) in India. How about a colonoscopy, or a digital angiogram. These procedures require computers, imaging software, and training. I doubt I'll find these for a few rupees in India."

Read this and weep (for joy, actually, O oppressed American patient): http://hyderabad.quikr.com/c-Health-Fitness-Cardiac-Imaging-India-Cardiac-MRI-Nuclear-Cardiology-India-W0QQAdIdZ63741191

He has always believed that the wrong people won WW II, which is why he has become house philosopher for the Ronulans and the Troofers.

But since he agrees with the left in hating AmeriKKKa, what's for the Overbite/Madcow Channel not to like?

And as he reaps his first ill-gotten profits on the backs of the neighborhood kids, he'll be lost to Salon forever.

The real hospital bill, the one your insurance company actually pays, is a small fraction of that, prearranged by contract. The astronomical bill you got in the mail was a fictitious 'list price' accounting that only the occasional hapless tourist caught "out of network" would actually be called upon to pay. A wealthy tourist, of course; the poor get all that care for free.

I propose an experiment. Let Obama's friends have their National Health Service, a full system of hospitals and equipment and doctors owned by Washington, funded by premiums and taxes like an expanded version of Medicare. But like the British, let's at the same time give patients the option of making their own arrangements outside the system. But let us put a special American spin on that option: let the private system be totally private, without any governmental controls or restrictions of any kind. Let Obamacare and private care compete freely. May the better system win.

"The only solution is go after tort and offer competition. This administration doesn't want to go there. There are only six insurance companies I can choose from in my state for healthcare, while there are 1300 in the country."

We have healthcare rationing now - when your insurance company says 'no', that's rationing - and we will have rationing under any of the public schemes being proposed. The only way to bring costs down is to introduce real competition to every part of the medical process.

They outsourced our jobs. Give us the equal right to shop the world for the medical goods and services we need.

"Conservative are against the war only because a DEMOCRAT is in charge. Where were all these wonderful right wing analysis when GWB was in charge. On this issue, it's hard for me to disagree with Obama. He has to basically stabilize Afghanistan "

Had we known on Sept 12 what we know now, our response to the attacks would undoubtedly have been different. We would have stomped the militant nations flat from the air, stripped them of whatever assets we could loot to rebuild the damage done by terrorism, then sealed the whole mess off to make international operations by the likes of al Qaeda impossible.

But had we done so, we would have immediately been accused of racism. "Why did Germany get the special rebuild treatment while the MIddle East got the seventh century?..." would have been the cry sent up around the world. So we're stuck with implementing a Marshall Plan in a nation that has never known civilization.

That part of the world can romp with new technology because it is unencumbered by lawyers and Luddites. Asia also has the heavy manufacturing infrastructure it takes to make any technology a product for the masses.

The good new solar systems are being built in China. So is the first operational set of low-cost AP1000 nuclear plants - an American design.

"The demonization spewed by this article, and by many responses, is pre-genocidal, and that's where we seem to be heading."

Yes, we are fully aware that insurance companies have the same power of life or death over us as the feared piblic health system. But what I see in this thread is another exercise by leftists in setting up hate for a class they have chosen to despise. If we don't like the health system now, what's it going to be like when there is only one big insurance company, run by those lovely folks who brought you the TSA, after any private choices have been hounded out of existence?

So you class warriors, when you have succeeded in turning this country into Zimbabwe, dominated by a militia of thugs paid in wastepaper currency, will you be prepared to die for your country's budget when you turn 65? When they thrust that tall glass of sodium silicate into your hands at gunpoint, will you gladly drink it? Will you die happy knowing that the world will remember you from the YouTube video your spoiled grandchildren made of you being 'disabled' and turned in under the Cash For Gramps program?

"how deeply have you studied US involvement in the Muslim world? "

This 'involvement', other than helping the Jews found a country of their own on the one totally worthless scrap of land in the region, has been to fork over incalculably vast amounts of money to the Muslim world for its oil resource. Over the years, this capital could have been used to start building a great civilization. Unfortunately, what it has actually been used for is...nothing. Palaces for potentates and a refrigerated ski resort in the desert, while the people still live in seventh-century filth. You can call this imperialism if you want, but it's not American imperialism. The tyrants that sorely need to be overthrown are living right there among them.