Is that serious or a joke? I honestly can't tell.

This is what I believe, through and through.

Every system has it's downsides. Private/Government/Mix, none are perfect.

My Sleep Study for sleep apnea was scheduled within 3 days of the doctor asking and took place within two weeks. In Canada the wait for a sleep study is in years. A quick search on the forum I go to for questions reveals numerous things like this, I can't imagine what it would be like to not get the medical care I need. Perhaps others can't imagine what it would be like to have an unexpected $700 bill in the mail. My $50 a month for 14 months is done next month, long before I would have even gotten in to see anyone in Canada, to use them as an example since I see quite a few on the forums complaining of waits. No system is perfect for everyone.

http://www.apneasupport.org/waiting-for-results-t29463.html

After months of waiting for the results, my son's overnight sleep study has finally been read. Unfortunately we had to travel to another province (6hrs away) to have the test done as there are only 3 pediatric sleep labs in Canada. Due to the sleep lab getting a new medical director it has been just over 3 months since the test was done. When I last spoke with the sleep lab they said the results were in, but i would have to wait for the booking dept to call me to make an appt with the specialist to get the results, meaning another 6hr trip. It is so worth the trip but I cannot wait to get the results. My son has been waiting 5 yrs to have this test done. It is extremely difficult having a specialist out of province.

Or not; it all depends on the charity and how the funds are distributed. A huge donation to partisan political organizations for example does not support social justice, or does so indirectly at best, nor does one concerned primarily with animal welfare, or religious organizations (again, indirect at best depending on said organization).

Further, as Merdle has mentioned, a mix, so far as the US is concerned, is the system in place, and it leaves people out in the cold (or dead) far too often. Specifically when it comes to health care, it has resulted in the worst, most cost-ineffective system in the free world.

Also, a system of strong social services maligned as a 'culture of dependency' is hyperbolic and ridiculous, especially given that people pay for them by way of taxation. Though there are those who cannot afford to contribute and rely on them nonetheless, they are the same people who would resort to private charity otherwise (if they could). Lastly, it is extremely doubtful that the vast majority of them want to be reliant and are content with subsisting off others; they are overwhelmingly dependent due to circumstance, not choice.

Finally, citing what is effectively an anecdotal failing of a singular socialized health system does not constitute some serious disadvantage of socialized medicine in general. It also ignores the fact that socialized medicine on the whole has enjoyed a vastly superior track record to largely private systems like the United States' in terms of overall quality and cost of care.

I know from recent personal experience that this is simply untrue.
That said, I waited several weeks instead of several days, but it was certainly not years.

I don't want to get into political specifics, I'd prefer to keep it on the philosophy side of social justice.

http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/conten...6/668.full.pdf
Canada
Canada has a population of 31.4 million (Statistics Canada: http://
www.statcan.ca) residents living in 10 provinces and 3 territories.
The number of sleep studies per 100,000 varies greatly across
the country (0–776 per 100,000, Table 2) as do waiting times. In
eastern and western Canada the wait for sleep specialist consultation
averages 4 to 6months (in some places it exceeds 12 months),
and completion of a polysomnogram varies from 8 to 30 months,
resulting in a total wait of approximately 24 months (range, 8–36
months). Patients in Quebec experience similar wait times as
the Western and Eastern regions. With greater sleep studies per
capita in Ontario, wait times are much shorter for consultation
and polysomnography, averaging 2.4 and 2 months, respectively,
and there is generally little time required to start CPAP.

Indeed, the results people have with the Canadian system seems to be mixed. Because whenever a conservative is asked, things in Canada take years. Others asked have found that simply not to be the case.

It's because there are examples in any system of things both good and bad. If I was a fan I can say "My dad was in British Columbia and got diverticulitis and his bill was $0" and if I'm not a fan I can say "My dad was in British Columbia and got diverticulitis and had to stay there for a week because there was a wait time on the medicine and his vacation to Alaska was cut short." They're both true, it's just a matter of preference as to what method is best for that individual person.

But it's those types of preferences that make any catch-all phrase like social justice worthless without more details I point out as I try to steer the discussion back.

My stand against bullying is from first hand experience. I was bullied in elementary school repeatedly. Teachers didn't care and one teacher was the worst bully around. I bullied one 12 year old girl cause she was small, munchkin sized in fact. She started crying and I felt bad inside. I could feel her pain. I never bullied a kid again. And I stood up for that girl the next several times she was bullied, walking up to her tormentor and saying 'Leave her alone'. The bully always backed up and fled, because getting in her face like that meant I could hit her if she didn't leave. I couldn't run very well which the bully also knew and had teased me about. Funny though she didn't tease me as much after I stood up to her.

That was 44 years ago and bullying was an old problem back then.

Elizabeth W.

Again, when examining the pros and cons of socialized medicine, you could at least pretend to have some modicum of intellectual integrity and look at the important macro-statistics (the true method of evaluating the net worth of any given system) and overall performance vis a vis the US , rather than allocating undue focus to perceived micro/anecdotal flaws.

You haven't read the cherry picked examples from the article, have you?