I read a breakdown of the 40 million Americans without health insurance recently.

Eighteen million were people in the 18-34 year old age range in good health. So they felt that health insurance was a low priority.

Nine million were people with incomes of over 75,000 dollars a year. They either felt health insurance was a low priority or considered themselves to be able to pay for any likely health care emergency.

That leaves only 13 million people who might truly want health care insurance and are unable to afford it.

The Latest population estimate for the USA is:

301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)

(According to: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html)

13 Million is insignificant at best.

You missing the point. 13 million in a country of 300+ million people is not that bad. In case you didn't notice also, we do NOT live in a socialist country. Why should I have to pay for some other persons insurance?

I would rather MY hard earned money be spent by ME not taken by the goddamn government and spent for me.

Why should I have to pay for some other persons insurance?

Well, for starters, because there is always the chance that "some other person" might some day have to pay for YOUR health insurance, or maybe your parents (grandparents) are on Medicare? If so, "some other person" is subsidizing their medical care.

And if your insurance is thru your employer, it IS paid for, in part, by others, since the cost of doing business (including employee benefits) is passed on to the rest of us.

No man is an island....we all pay into the system, and we all take from it, sooner or later - us or our parents or kids, etc. I had a grandchild born 17 yrs ago with a life-threatening birth defect. Medicaid paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, because his dad's insurance did not pick up dependents until they were 10 days old, and excluded pre-existing conditions.

Never say never, Derick.

Dude, it is so much better in Canada. Everyone up here has medical coverage. It is folded into our taxes. The rich pay a little more

but they are certainly not bankrupted, you know.

Remember that almost all advanced economies, with the exception of the U.S., have universal health care. The countries who have this save a lot of money because we cut out the businessmen. More taxes but no premiums, eh.... Everyone is on the hook one way or another but those countries who do have universal health care are not underwriting the lifestyles of a cadre of Big Biznessmen.

No, Derick, I completely get your point. But I find that your point is insulting and misguided. When you break healthcare and insurance down into numbers and forget that you are talking about PEOPLE, you turn this country into a machine with important parts and unimportant parts. This isn't a bunch of numbers you are talking about, they are people. It's so easy to pretend like 13 million doesn't matter when you dehumanize everything down into a statistic.

13 million is a HELL of a lot of people. Let's say you had $300+ million in the bank. If $13 million suddenly disappeared, would you just say "oh well! I still have $300+ million left!". I don't think so.

Whether you like it or not, your so-called hard earned money IS spent by the government. And I would much rather pay for universal healthcare than for a ridiculous monstrosity of a war.

Carlene and Green, you both make some excellent points here.

I would rather my money was taken out of my paycheck and I had the same healthcare everyone else has, if I could say, like green, "our healthcare is great!". Insurance companies will use anything they can to not pay for something, or to drop coverage on an actually sick person. My mother in law's insurance is trying to drop her on a technicality, and she has cancer. I firmly believe that if she were healthy and just paying her premiums every month, they'd make no issue of it.

One person without insurance is a tragedy, lucy

13 million is a statistic

I do not care, about any of those 13 million people. My heart does not bleed for everyone else like yours. I will stick to worrying about my family first and foremost, thank you very much.

In those countries which have universal health care nobody gets dropped on a technicality.

I am sorry to hear about your mother-in-law, Marimaru.

universal health care will become another tax burden on the hard-working "middle class" -- the "filthy rich" can buy anything they want. Government employees (including politicians like Sen. Hillary Clinton) will never join universal health care because their program, created by Congress and partially funded by tax money, is far superior to any "universal" plan they might slap together. The "underprivileged" (based on experience in civilized nations) will overload the universal health care system to the point that the "middle-class" working man will be forced to "go private" because he can't sit in the waiting room day after day after day to see an overworked doctor.

Canadians flock to the United States for procedures that have three-year waits in Canada. Sweden's widely praised system is on the verge of collapse with the government being unable to raise taxes high enough to cover the program's costs.

If that "makes economic sense," it's in a far different economy than any of us have ever experienced. Declaring health care a "right" necessarily declares choice "not a right." That is more reminiscent of Soviet Russia than the United States; we all know what happened to that economy.

I have a question for the Canadians here. If your taxes pay for all health care, why are there threads about Canadians going to Mexico for band surgery? Is it different in different provinces?

While I agree with you that 13million is significant and I do care for these people, I truly do, but what I can tell you based in my own experience having been born and grown up in a country with socialized medicine is that it's much easier said than done, socialized medicine in my opinion was horrible, like I mentioned before, if you need surgery, you need to wait in line, people do die waiting.....my own grandmother was being transfered from one bed to another and the bed sheets were in bad condition and they broke and my grandmother fell on the floor and due to that, she almost died, the hospitals don't have the air conditioner running most of the times to save evergy and it's so extremely hot, patients are sweating, family members as well, they would allow family to bring their own little fans and then they stopped that too, in order to conserve energy....the lack of medications, the quality of the health care and physicians is just not good, this I guarantee you.

I do not care, about any of those 13 million people.

Spoken like a true Republican. GW Bush must be so proud of you, Derick.