Excellent blog Bobber!! This is a great source tool for people to refer to. I may print it out!

Sad news today on the death of Ted. I hear people on my radio saying "we should pass HCR in his honor". NO! We should have fixed the problem while he was still alive so he could have seen it happen!!!

I'll echo VJ: Happy Birthday Mondo!

And a Birthday shoutout to our very own nurse:

Happy Birthday!!!

ugh this woman

I think the woman was trying to say that even though the cash-for-clunkers money goes directly to the dealer, the car buyer has to pay taxes on it as though it were income.

I don't know if it's true, but even if it is: what's the problem?

WASHINGTON - AUGUST 26: The flag flies at half-mast over the U.S. Capitol the morning after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) died at his home in Massachusetts, August 26, 2009 in Washington, DC.

VERY good news here.

Shelagh!

we all need to make an effort to get on the mailing lists of the astroturfers so we can be prepared.

One thing I have learned -- the emails are how they share the information-- they don't use the web....

And they REALLY know how to use the twitter. It is gross, but it is the only way to know.

I wish someone would come up with an astroturf website that announces all the dirty crap that they are up to.

Unfuckingbelieveable.. we have a running celebrity death thread over on the gaming forum that we try to keep relatively respectable.. even when Michael Jackson died, the whole weirdness, child accusations & drug problems thing was kept elsewhere.

Some asshole thought it would be respectful to post the goddamn newspaper clipping about Chappaquiddick.

I see another project for a talented pair :p

Good morning, bloggers!

Excellent post, BobR!! I will pass it on to a few people.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MONDO!!!!!

Mornin' mornin' Will Will!

What happened to the blog? It got awfully quiet.

Limbaugh is fucking vile.. I'm not even going to link to the crap he said today.

Vile is really an understatement.

As a side note, Nancy Reagan will be on Ron Reagan show this evening to talk about her close friendship with the Senator.

No one seems to post here at night anymore.

Goody! My new Microphone is here!

This is an excellent post. The Canadian payment system is slightly more complicated than is mentioned here. Each province and territory adminsters it's own plan, as was pointed out here, but that's done under federal legislation to set standards and with subsidies from the federal government (AKA transfer payments).

As a Canadian who lived and worked in the US for seven years, there is no doubt in my mind that I get better care in Canada than what I had to endure during my seven years in the US system. This might come as a shock to some Americans, but this is my experience.

I am almost 60 years old and have been retired for almost four years. I have a decent pension, but I could never afford health insurance or health care in the US, even if they would accept me because of a couple of "pre existing conditions". I have just over five years before I would be eligible for Medicare in the US. This makes absolutely no difference in Canada. I have, and always have had, access to health care whenever I need it here.

I have had a couple of serious surgeries with long wait times ... 4 days once for a serious one (to specialist one day, into hospital the next, testing and CT the third and surgery the fourth) and 16 days for a potentially serious one (GP to otolarygologist to surgery for removal of a laryngeal lesion (turned out to be benign) and then surgical reconstruction of the vocal cords in 16 days) I have also been going to a speech language pathologist every two weeks since that surgery (two months ago) to assist in recovering my voice (paid by the health care system) . My voice is close to getting back to normal, because of what the speech pathologist has done.

My mother had bypass surgery at age 72 within 2 1/2 days (some of that was to stabilize her so she would be more likely to survive the surgery). She also had cataract surgery at age 77, diagnosis to surgery 14 days.

My experience in the US in the 1980's is that the insurance company run around for approval would take longer than it took me to have surgery here.

Incidentally, for those fools who say there is no health care for seniors in Canada, beside the examples I have already mentioned, 1200 hip replacements done in Canada last year were done on people 85 years old or older.

Many Americans simply have no idea of the quality and efficiency of the Canadian system and opponents of reform have made up self serving lies about it. The American Patients United Now commercial with Shona Holmes, for example, was pulled by the FCC as false advertising. The "brain tumour" from which she "would have died" because of the Canadian system, was actually a non life threatening benign cyst, which her physician had prioritized as such, and had made appropriate appointments for her, based on that physician's opinion of her condition's priority. No system is perfect and our system may occassionally need some tweaking, but 92% of Canadians far prefer what we have, and would totally reject an American style one. This is the best measure of which we consider to be better anyway.

Thanks for your insight Murphy.