Someone please explain health care reform to a Canadian

There are a number of reasons people are oposed to this bill. It doesn't do much of anything to fix the some in this country have paying for healthcare. It gives the IRS unprecidented powers. It does not prohibit health insurance companies from covering preexiting conditions. It is a hugely complex bill, over 2500 pages long full of legal doublespeak and hidden stuff like college education funding reform (in a healthcare bill?). You should also understand that this did not create a "national healthcare" mechanism. There is no single payer system, there is no newly created government insurance company, but... I wouldnt trust my government to handle my pet's healthcare, let alone mine, anyways. My issues are several fold and mostly issues with the constitutionality. Our system of government is that of a republic. Our federal government has very little authority, defering most of it to each state, which exists as a mostly soveirgn state in of itself. We don't like big governments, especialy a big federal government. Unfortuneatly, it has become one...and this bill only expands that power exponentialy. The more power we give it...the more dangerous to liberty it becomes. One of the BIGGEST constitutional issues is the fact that it mandates each and every person buy and carry health insurance. This is sometheing the federal government has absolutely no authority to do. Now, you may see it as a good thing...but the ends should not justify the means and I am not willing to trade one lick of liberty for a false sense of security...be it healthcare security, personal security, nationeal security, economic security, etc. It flies in the face of everything this country was founded on. whats worse, is the IRS now going to be going through on a monthly basis and auditng to make sure everyone has "an acceptable" insurance policy. Who in the heck is a revenue collection and enforecemtn agency...or a government for that matter..to tell me what sort of insurance I should have? Even if you have insurance already, if they don't deem what you have to be acceptable, they will make you change your coverage to one that IS acceptable to them. Again, who are THEY to dictate to ME somehting like this? Most of us here in the US wanted to see something done to allow the 10% of folks who don't have health insurance get some...but this bill simply does not do this and is almost a christmas present to the insurance companies. Our federal government was never intended to be a provider of all things comfortable or even of nessesity. It was designed as a subserviant agent of the states who formed it, to tend to common business, international affairs, securtity and national defense, basic infastructure and the like. But we have added so many gizmos and gadgets to it that it doesn't do any one thing very well or efficiantly, or affordably any more. This also shines a light on another problem with the bill by the way... the cost...we are already running record debt and deficit...our credit rating may well be knocked down a notch for the first time in history....we simply accnot afford all our government does AND this new responsability. there is so much more at issue with it, but I think I have given you quite a bit to chew on already so I'll leave it here for now. I hope you intend to come back to this discusion (you earn more anyways in coninuing the comments) and continue this. I would be happy to answer any specific questions and give you all tghe information I can as i understand it. I'll leave you for now with a couple relevent quotes for you to ponder, from a couple of my country's founders.... "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take everything you have" ~Thomas Jefferson "anyone willing to trade their essential liberties for a little security, deserves neither liberty or security" ~Benjamin Franklin

I'm with you on this one, I don't understand it either. Here in the UK we have the National Health Service. It may not be the best in the world but it means we have health care for everyone. We pay a proportion of our taxes for the National Health Service so everyone is entitled to care.

Canada has Universal Health Care - but from what I understand it's a different set up. The bill does a lot of things. It forbids insurance providers from rejecting customers based on pre-existing conditions, as well as forbids several predatory pricing practices and raising premiums to immense prices for higher risk customers. In a lot of ways, it does a lot of good. The negative views, at present, are mostly centered around the mandatory aspect of it. We will still have health insurance that we have to pay for every month. In addition, we'll be paying extra taxes to support this health initiative. The system we have now, while immensely flawed, is an optional one. If you don't want health insurance, you don't have to have it. Under the new laws, not only will you have to have insurance (you'll be fined if you don't), but we aren't even sure how many claims health insurance providers have to cover. In essence, the people wanted one thing, and got another.