Comments from a Canadian relative: Some of the information in the article is quite skewed and not presented accurately. There are other things that should be emphasized more to point out the actual issues. ... There is indeed a revival of talk about a “2-tier” system. It’s quite scary. Quite a few of our provincial politicians are talking more and more in this direction. In fact our former provincial premier, King Ralph, spoke out recently that because of the current mismanagement of the government (of which he was the leader), that we may have no alternative. I think it is largely because ever since our former liberal government screwed the provinces in terms of health care funding, provinces have had to find their own solutions. And currently the solution is looking to private care supplementation. What happened in the early 90s under the federal Liberals destroyed our system and we’ve never recovered. The other half of the problem is that all our politicians are drunk with deficit spending. The problem is they are blowing it all on shit we don’t need (like $1.3M per job for shitty GM cars) and they’re raping the programs that we do need. I swear everyone – conservative, liberal, NDP (socialists) - are all on crack. But in spending all this money, they’re getting a lot of favors from their friends (unions, corporations, etc). There’s been tremendous pressure for our minority federal government to run massive deficits from not only the opposition parties, but also internationally – especially the USA. I’m not sure why other nations are so insistent that we enslave ourselves to massive debt like everyone else when we don’t need to. Our government was fully prepared to stay the course and not pursue deficit stimulus spending. But the pressure externally and internally (threats of voting down the minority government) cause a radical change in course. Hopefully someone will remember the financial history of the Weimar republic before it becomes our history. It’s extremely unfortunate that while there are many fine working universal healthcare models in the world today, our leaders keep looking south to the US for ideas. No offense – but I can’t think of a worse scenario. I think another part of the problem there is that we have a lot of cross-border business interests (pharma, insurance, equipment suppliers, etc) who are making a big push for this. More corrupt ties. Bottom line is that our politicians have mismanaged our nation for a long time and we’re beginning to pay for it. Couple that with a weakening economy (due to a weakening US economy – our largest trading partner) and the shit is really hitting the fan. Then add to the equation that a number of our politicians are quite corrupt and making decisions to further their political careers and financial holdings while sacrificing the good of the nation. We have another big story of this on the federal level right now. ... It’s not that it can’t work. It’s that our politicians are incapable of common sense wisdom.