I love you, too?

People complain (ie. news stories) about something like this precisely because it is a problem. In the case of health care, it can be a life-or-death problem. When trying to create a better health care system, ignoring those problems is a disservice to those who use it and pay for it, and will certainly cost lives and have some affect on the quality of life for some of the taxpayers. As our nation considers taking on a system like this, it would be a grave mistake to ignore the lessons learned from similar systems.

I could, too, and it doesn't take a hyper-expensive nationalized system to make that happen. Nor does it cost a lot for that type of visit.

A part of our national debate on the issue centers on what is called "preventative care", the notion that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that regular check-ups, screenings, counseling, etc, can nip in the bud ailments that would otherwise be much more difficult and costly to treat if left undetected or untreated during the early stages. What is the worth of preventative medicine if you can't actually get it because it's wait-listed? If we can't get this cornerstone of the program to work, then the rest of it is doomed to fail.

The domestic model for our national plan, coming from the state of Massachusetts, suffers from problems with... wait lists and emergency care. It's nice that you don't have those problems back home; here, with the plan that the feds want to copy-and-paste and expand, we do. So yeah, I question why we want that. I'd be foolish NOT to.
So what you're saying is that we don't need a national system in order to have the same problems you experience in Norway. Looks like we agree on something.

People like me are the ones trying to make sure the critical questions get asked and answered.

I have no problem paying taxes, when they're used well. It's useful to note that the "normal" people in the US, approaching roughly 50%, pay virtually no federal income tax. Our family is somewhere around 30% for federal and 40% combined, not counting sales tax. Where does 40% for a middle-class family fall in your scale of 'normal', in a nation where almost half pay nearly no federal tax? Hell, if I were in the non-paying group, I'd keep my mouth shut instead of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

So, if you want to continue to assume things about my tax situation, at least you now have a basic number to work with. I'm pretty sure 40% gives me reason to request our country spend wisely, and reason to question its multi-trillion dollar plans for health care.

I don't have to vilify social med or imagine why it won't work here, because we already have it and there are serious problems that we can't seem to fix. No excuse needed when facts tell the story. We can't fix what we have and adding to it won't make it better.

People like me are the ones supporting those who choose not to work, who choose not to take care of themselves, who choose not to do anything to improve their status in life. If you tried your best and can't make it work, then let me give you a boost so you can make another go at it. If you don't try, why should the rest of us try for you?

People like you are helping to grow the financially unsustainable entitlement systems throughout the "modernized" nations, which will cause societies to fail as governments crumble under their own weight.

But if you paid attention, you would notice that I've previously given some praise to one aspect of socialized med in the US, the VA (Veterans Administration) health system, based on anecdotal evidence of helping my dad deal with years of choosing not to take care of himself. While I suspect it's particularly hard to read with one's head so firmly planted inside one's nether regions, hopefully your medical system can help you with an extraction procedure. When you see your doctor tomorrow, ask him about getting that taken care of.
And to you, as well.

No, I don't, and the reverse is not true. Our society and our economy are inextricably intermingled, and they service each other.
Our particular society and economy both successfully evolved for a century and a half without massive entitlement spending, back when people took responsibility for themselves, saved before spending, and made themselves secure before assuming further familial responsibilities. The standards of living and of health were both increasing over that time. This, without a major federal social program. But times change, blah blah blah.

It was decided last century that the federal gov't could provide help to those who found themselves in situations beyond their control (ie. the wage-earning spouse died) and who critically needed the medical and financial help. Basically, it would lend a hand to those in need, and it was a good thing when that was the scope. Social Security, and later Medicare and Medicaid, were instituted to help in those cases. Then SS was expanded to include virtually everyone. Now these social programs have grown so large that no one dare propose the changes necessary to make them sustainable.

An off-the-top salary deduction of ~15% (FICA) is supposed to cover the fiscal needs of SS and Medicare (that deduction has increased to about six times where it started back in the 1930s). It doesn't, so we add more money from the General Fund to cover the shortfalls. And even that won't be enough in a few years. Technically, it's already not enough as eliminating all other federal spending outside of those three programs would have the budget in red ink each year. Now, with that much spending, which currently doesn't cover everyone for medical and whatever else we may come up with, further increasing the scope is going to be an ever greater fiscal problem. To reflect this, the insurance reform act uses 10 years of taxes to pay for its first 6 years of full implementation. What happens after that, when it's essentially 40% unfunded? And that's not even a fully-socialized system.

I guess I have that other 60% to give...

Too bad none of our current, or proposed, systems look anything like that.

Actually, that's not true. There is a current budget proposal that takes Medicare somewhat closer to France's plan, compared with what we have today, with insurance premium vouchers taking the place of the current Medicare setup. This is being poo-pooed by the left, saying it will abandon the elderly. So France has a system that appears to function decently (I haven't dug deeply), one party floats a plan that moves our current Medicare system in that direction, and the other party blasts it. Instead, they wish to model a system after one that a particular state tried and has found to have significant shortfalls.

In typical US gov't fashion, it looks at something that appears to be working elsewhere... and then instead expands the unsustainable thing we already have.

While I appreciate someone from Norway telling me that everything is great over there, let me point out that one must look at how things are currently done over here before saying that their solution is the one for us. Because it's not. It should be examined through the lenses of what we already have and what the pols want to turn it into. While France may have a great system, it's moot since that's not what our pols want to do here with single-payer universal coverage. Instead, we can look at the examples of other systems that are close to the US proposals (UK and Massachusetts, in particular), and understand the problems that exist before creating the same mistakes all over again, on a larger scale.