...I was getting ready for work and listening to cnn in the background. Apparently they just had a big cancer summit in Ireland over the past few days. cnn's Dr. Sanjay Gupta was there and corralled the Public Health Minister for Ireland over in to the corner for an interview. Apparently Ireland was a European holdout, and just went through the "reform" of their healthcare a few years back and went with 'healthcare for all.'

The Irish fellow didn't even try to defend his own system. I waited for him to say, "We're still working the kinks out....", but I didn't hear it.

Off the top of my head, I recall that the Irish guy said they spent 40% of their collected tax revenue in 2008 on public healthcare, to the detriment of many other services. This part is fuzzy, but I also believe he said in the order of 2/3 of the Country still paid for some partial or full insurance, because the public system sucks.

The hip replacement waiting time, for instance was months, ect......

The healthcare thing isn't going to affect me directly in the slightest, unless my taxes go up to fund the program, but I recommend trying to find a transcript of Dr. Gupta's interview of Ireland's Health Minister to you rich guys left over from the 60's who are staring knee & hip replacements and bypasses in the face.

Off to work. All the protesting I can afford today.