sujoy I don’t think that you read what I wrote and that’s why I stood a bit confused. Just for the record I said and I quote “It does ask for a SINGLE payer system.” I never said anything to the contrary. Your comment ” If a patient has cancer or any other disease respiratory heart disease ….- and not wait for the condition to get worse to be rushed into ER for care just to be stabilized temporarily ” stands as the underlying principle of Medicine and is what is practiced today. It is really not true that healthcare in the US is for the rich only. In fact the poor and the homeless have access to the best surgeons at Harvard so much so that you and I will have to go through a lot of hoops to get that kind of care. To add to this almost every large academic healthcare inst. where you get the best care has a free clinics in every department starting from general medicine to orthopedics. So this would be your food stamp equivalent. This is of course apart from the Medicaid system. See the bottom line is the US has the best healthcare in the world available to the majority of its citizens. The number that I have heard thrown around ranges form 20 - 50 million people who are not insured. Take into account the fact that there are about 25 million people are also illegals in this country who are being supported on a daily basis by our healthcare system . Hence if you talk about citizens as you did we have a lot of them covered. That is not the problem. The problem is underinsurance and not non-insurance. It is when you need a particular procedure and is denied by some high school dropout on the other end of the phone. Also when you say that the other developed countries have it all figured out I don’t agree. Take it with a grain of salt when Sweden or Cuba says that their infant mortality rate is the lowest in the world. The fact is a large majority of the complicated cases come to this country CHOP Boston childrens etc handle by far the MOST complicated cases in the WORLD and by the hundreds. This brings me to my point that I am trying to make. Please understand that the US subsidizes the entire world as far as innovations in healthcare are concerned. Pharmaceuticals instrumentation surgeries technologies techniques and much more. This all has a cost. Now you can argue that maybe we should scale back on the research and development to save money. I am not sure that is the solution. I will end by saying fundamentally you might be correct in your sentiment that healthcare should be accessed at all times free top quality and for all. Please believe me in that doctors in this country and others I am sure all strive for that inspite of the hurdles put forward to them by insurance companies. http://