I showed a Canadian friend, a small business owner, the video we made this summer about Real Canadians talking real health care.

I felt I would share his reply, which conveys the sheer wonderment Canadians have about how incredibly foolish Americans have become. How willing this once great nation is to be manipulated by the super rich. How willing we are to just STFU and be slaves to the status quo. It's pathetic and dispiriting.

Shoq:

I like your video.  There was a lovely live feed of personal stories when this petition on Avaaz came out.

I am continually puzzled how many Americans find something wrong with Universal health care.  Why wouldn't you want health care for free and a higher life expectancy?  And at basically no cost.  Do you know that the US taxpayer pays as much per person for public healthcare as the Canadian taxpayer does, even though for that amount of money the Canadian taxpayer covers everything for everybody?

It's a shame Obama didn't go wholly public.  It's the hybrid system and all the money and billing and risk management, and the efforts to pass costs and risks on to others that makes the system expensive.

I don't know if you asked the people you interviewed about their politics, like Michael Moore did.  I'm certain you could easily make a video like that with nothing but conservative voters.  The disappointing thing is that not a single elected Conservative said anything to defend our system when their American friends started misrepresenting it.
 

When do we wake up from this hideous dream? When do we stop letting 20 million Fox News viewers and Rush Limbaugh listeners, fooled by huge corporate propaganda dollars, from forcing the rest of us to sit back and watch our nation slide off a cliff.  And for what?  To  protect the interests of a very few privileged people.  People who would do well to stop this exploitation of the rest of us before the consequences come knocking on their doors with pitchforks and torches.