After watching Sicko, my co-worker and I were ready to pack up and move to France also.
Let me help illustrate a point, I am at the point of picking and chosing what I want to have checked and treated due to escalating costs of everything. For example, I haven't had any routine screenings whatsoever in over two years because of having to pay off bills for acute conditions; two trips to the ER for a kidney stone and several visits to a physical therapist for tendonitis. A week ago I asked my payroll department to stop taking voluntary deductions that go into a retirement account. At least that way perhaps I'll have a little more money to pay for some important screenings. I want to do what I can to ensure I will even "make it" to retirement.
I am on the fence about nationalized health care. I try to understand about the costs of R&D, however, as a person who suffers from an incurable, chronic and potentially life-threatening disease, it really bums me out that R&D isn't doing a better job of finding a cure for we who are afflicted with this and other such diseases.
Seeing the degree of greed escalate in this capitalistic country causes me to have little faith in the R&D process. I think in a lot of cases the pharmy industry main focus seems to be on various addictive band-aids (or band-aids that cause other problems) rather than cures, because there's no long-term income in curing. JMHO.
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