For a moment. Then someone will invent a better fuel cap for robots to grasp, and then there will be a brief flurry in gas cap retrofit work.

What if they give you a single thing, but that thing is actually better than all the options that you have today that you can realistically afford (now and for the foreseeable future)?

This "they fought for freedom" thing... you know, when e.g. Americans volunteered to "fight for freedom" in WW2, a hundred thousand of their fellow citizens were in concentration camps simply on account of their ethnicity, and it wasn't exactly secret knowledge - and popular sentiment was largely in favor of that. So it was part of the "freedom" that they fought for. Somehow, I don't think that they would have been outraged by the Patriot Act.

(Note, I'm not saying that it's a good thing - but don't seek moral approval in history when it's largely retconned.)

It's not just this single issue. It's any number of things. The media latches onto a headlline of it's choosing and wont let go of it. Anything that contradicts the "narrative" is suppressed. The entire news media is a farce (and not just game journalism).

I've seen state ratings that have flatly contradicted my own personal first hand experience.

Plus the "price" of American healthcare is potentially a very misleading thing as others (and myself) have already indicated.

The OP was about lack of transparency in billing and quickly got hijacked by eurotrash trying to repeat the same tired media narrative about socialized medicine and American healthcare. This kind of stupidity is how we end up with "reform" legislation that doesn't address the relevant crap.

People that are genuinely poor have a public option to fall back on.

People that are not genuinely poor are merely confronted with services that are as expensive as the consumer products they willingly indulge in without ever considering the implications.

In other words, you have to go to a lot of bother that really shouldn't occur to begin with. ALL billing artifacts should make sense BY DEFAULT. It should not require extra special diligence on the part of a patient (or any other sort of customer) to get a real bill or see what the real costs are.

The fact that this is not the norm is directly attributable to the "someone else will pay for it" mentality.

Have you actually read it yourself beyond the title? It doesn't permit the US government from granting anyone titles of nobility. It doesn't prevent anyone from holding or claiming such a title on other grounds.

I suspect that you're confusing it with the Titles of Nobility amendment, which went further by stripping citizenship from anyone who would accept a title from a foreign country (so even under it self-claimed titles wouldn't count) - but that amendment was never ratified and is not standing law. Some people claim that it "has actually been ratified", and hence is part of the Constitution "that the government doesn't want you to know about" - usually this is claimed by fringe right-wingers, the type of guys to the right of the Tea Party.

I'm pretty sure that the drug that I am on currently isn't allowed by the NHS because it's too expensive. Although it's not just the UK. Our own "public options" have similar problems where expensive treatments aren't covered either.

I'm not sure which numbers you're looking at. In October 2013, USA exported 7.7 million bpd per day, while importing 7.6 million bpd. That's net export.

Specifically, I am referring to a return to federalism, with the vast majority of citizens' government coming from the state and local levels. You know, the way this system was intended to work.

Or any soy product that has not been fermented...

Most of the time that's correct, but I see it with surprising frequency on level terrain. I think most of them are simply not paying full attention to the road; perhaps they're fiddling with a cell phone.

It's the same reason people sometimes fail to notice that the light has turned green. I mean, why should they pay attention, it's not like they're *driving* or anything...

Apparently this is confusing some of you. So I'll explain how it works in the USA.

Hypothetically, let's say you cause a car accident, as in this imaginary accident is 100% your fault. As a result of this accident, another person is injured and requires medical care. Your own car insurance policy has a line item called Bodily Injury Coverage. That coverage would pay for the injured person's medical expenses.

The injured person would not file a claim with their health insurance company (assuming they have one) because you, as the person who caused the accident, are held responsible for any expenses you caused to the injured person.

I was simply asking if car insurance works that way overseas. Instead of a private insurance company that you may or may not have, you have NHS. While the NHS is provided as a public service, the care they provide does have a cost. I wanted to know if NHS bears that cost even when there is an at-fault party who caused the problem, or whether in those specific cases, the at-fault party (via their car insurance liability policy) was expected to cover it.

You could ask me that, yes. Or you could put just a slight bit of thought into it and consider that there is a more reasonable alternative, which is that the drunk driver's insurance would cover this as part of liability coverage. Perhaps NHS could kick in if that's unavailable?

There's loads of ways this could be done, and since I am not knowledgable about the nuances of laws governing nations across the Atlantic, I ask questions instead of making assumptions. That's all.