Words to live by. However, a lot of Canadians are duped into thinking that we do not have a "2 Tier" health care system up here. In actual fact, we do. In the simplest of terms, a Canadian can go to a Doctor appointment for free, but cannot buy the prescription, which is not free, unless (s)he has a health insurance plan or lots of money, or is on welfare (for whom prescriptions are free). Add to that the fact that if one needs physiotherapy, psychiatry, occupational therapy, plastic surgery, or any elective surgery, the waiting lists under the public system are often a year or more. But then most of these things are available much faster from private practitioners if you carry Blue Cross or some other health insurance, which is often paid for as an employment benefit to people fortunate enough to be working for a huge company like GM.

I'm not terribly familiar with the U.S. health care, but it appears that from watching certain American "Reality TV" shows, a lot of compassionate effort goes into scraping junkies up off the street and taking them to free emergency rooms. Here in Canada, the equivalent junkie would have to pay $120 for the ambulance ride!

Canadian health care has a uniform and universal accessability to a bare minimum of services. Anything more than that, you have to pay out of pocket, or be fortunate enough to have employer funded health insurance. But boy- do we pay! My top earnings are taxed at around 50% at source, then we have to pay 15% sales tax on every buck we spend. It really is a tough call on which country really has better health care- I wouldn't automatically jump to the conclusion that Canada's is better, as many of us do.

As for GM cars- well, I don't like them very much when it comes to styling and comfort. But it seems when it comes to reliability, they're hard to beat. Besides my ol' 300D, we have a '98 Cavalier. It has presented us with absolutely zero problems. I can't think of a single thing that has gone wrong with this car- and we got it new. The only repair so far has been a new muffler. But on the other hand, I absolutely cringe when I have to drive it. The suspension is like a dog-cart, and the seating was designed for 5 foot-nothing little women, not 6'-3" 220 lb dudes like me!

Dave form the North Country

http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=31&threadID=13836

I SWEAR I did not read this before posting. Maybe it's closer to reality than I thought.