Not all universal healthcare systems are equal. Something like Germany or Australia's (which still optionally has private insurers and private medical providers) would probably work better in the US than the Canadian system or UK NHS-style systems.

How can a single payer (the government) 'screw up' that badly though? All they are is the PAYER, not the entity providing medical treatment. All they do is pay the bill. The worst screw up they could manage is ... not paying. In which case it's their problem, not yours.

Writing from the perspective of someone living in a single payer healthcare country here (Australia), where the government pays the bill (or most of it at least). Doctors clinics themselves are still private businesses - I can pick any doctor I want and switch at will. "Single payer" means precisely that: single ~payer~ (i.e. the government pays the doctor, or reimburses me for what I've already paid to them). The Canadian system is different. It is indeed single payer but the problems your extended family are describing aren't related to that aspect of the system.

PS. I've lived in Canada, the UK, Australia and the US. The former three are all 'single payer universal' systems but all are different in terms of the actual provision of treatment side of things.

Uh, living in a country with single payer universal healthcare Australia ... that's exactly how it works. If I want to go to the doctor right now, I can pick any doctor whatsoever and just ... go there. (Obviously in reality I'd call and make an appointment first to make sure they have time to fit me in, but then, you do that in America too).

What ever gave you the idea that you can't go to the doctor whenever you feel like it? That'd be a pretty awful system - indeed part of the reason why universal health care has better health outcomes in the first place is BECAUSE there's no cost barriers to going to the doctor. You can go when you feel you need it and not put something off because of cost. Prevention/early detection is better than cure after all.

Now if you're talking about hospital treatment, then yes, on occasion you may need to wait. Same as if you showed up at emergency ... you get triaged. Waiting a month or two to get treated for something that isn't urgent and won't affect the final outcome is fine. But if you need treatment or surgery ASAP for something serious - you'll get it.

Single payer doesn't necessarily imply single ~provider~ (though, in some countries, it does). I live in Australia, which has a single-payer universal system. But I can choose to go to any doctor I want. Those doctors' clinics are still private practices and the doctors are not government employees or members of any wider 'system'. It's just that when I go to the front counter to pay the bill at the end, the government foots some or all of the bill (depending on what was actually done during the consultation).

We have private hospitals in addition to the public ones, and you can still choose to get private health insurance if you want it (indeed, the government gives you a tax incentive to do so, since you are less of a burden on the public system if you also have private insurance). But it's not required. The point is though that 'single payer' does not mean "no options". You have just as many options as you did before in terms of ~treatment~ providers ... but you now no longer have to worry about choosing ~insurance~ as well (though, you still can if you really want).

250 GB might blow, but generally markets where monthly download/upload allowances are the norm, also offer a RANGE of plans with different download allowances. His limit is probably 250 GB because he chose a 250 GB plan, because that met his needs. He could pay a bit more and upgrade to a higher limit if needed.

I'm guessing here of course, but I've lived in several countries with download allowances of this nature, and in all cases, my download 'limit' was self-imposed by the plan I chose. A typical ISP in a country like Australia will have low end plans with maybe 30 or 50 GB per month, some midrange plans in the 'couple of hundred GB' range, and high end plans with 1 TB and upwards per month. All at the same speed and identical in every respect except download limit and price.

The problem is, DSL is becoming less and less a 'real' option. Vast areas which have 'DSL' service are still only ADSL1, which technically maxes out at 8 Mbps downstream but is sold in most markets in tiers up to 6 Mbps (e.g. 768kbps, 1.5 Mbps, 3 Mbps, 6 Mbps). 6 Mbps downstream is pretty limiting these days, to say nothing of the awful upstream bitrates (384kbps? what a joke)

ADSL2+ (up to 24 Mbps down), VDSL, and VDSL2 (which can be as fast as cable if your line length is short) are better but not available in many places. Plus it's often hard to tell what you can get as ISPs obscure the actual technology used behind a generic product name (e.g. Uverse is delivered either over ADSL2+ or VDSL, depending on location, and the only way you can find out is by applying and seeing what speeds they'll offer you).

I'm a Charter customer (relatively new, just under 2 years now). I just have standalone internet though. No phone, no TV. Wondering what specifically you've found that sucks about them.

For me, using them for internet only, they seem fine. I've been quite happy:

- Seems to perform as advertised (60 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up)
- Downtime so far has been in the 'couple of hours per year' range, which is fine for a residential connection.
- I have servers at home and they don't seem to block any incoming ports (or at least, none of the ports I use)
- Price was good for the first year (29.99/month). It's now higher ($47.46/month including my local taxes), but that's still "OK".

Maybe I've been lucky - any horror stories you want to share? :)

Just 1 would probably do it - occasionally I still have to copy some files to/from a USB stick or external hard drive, or download things off a camera. Don't think I'd ever need to do more than one of those at the same time. This is assuming that the same port ~isn't~ also used for other necessary things like ethernet and charging (ala the new Macbook).

Notwithstanding the dodgy 1% calculation, Pandora is only available in three countries:

USA: population ~318M
Australia: population ~24M
New Zealand: population ~4M

So you only have a total population of ~346 million people who could even ~potentially~ be Pandora subscribers.

In many (most?) countries, the government adds interest payable to the amount of the refund when they pay you back. Of course right now, interest rates are very low in most places so this doesn't amount to much...

Yeah I really can't see Dell or HP going anywhere fast. The company I work for alone buys in in the order of 20,000 machines from them every year...

Picked the metric elevation option, but my actual elevation is ~700 metres.

Being in a fully metric country, I don't have even the slightest bit of innate feel for feet, especially for large numbers such as elevation unfortunately. It's around ~2300 ft apparently. I ~do~ have a somewhat decent feel for converting temperatures to F and distances in km to miles, but that's about it. Feet, inches, ounces (both as volume and weight), gallons etc I haven't got even the slightest knowledge of...

But the in flight display is for the average passenger, not the pilot. Telling them that they are flying at 10,668 metres allows them to get a 'feel' for what that means, since they can compare it with things they know. Most people have a rough idea that Everest is almost 9 km in elevation (8848 metres), for instance. The Aussies on the flight would mentally compare it to Mt. Kosciusko which they are likely to know is a little over 2200 metres. Many would also know roughly what elevation their home city was at etc, or the height of famous tall buildings, in metres.

Quoting it in feet doesn't help anyone except pilots and Americans. But having said that, every in-flight map system I've ever seen (not that I've seen them all, but I do fly a lot, including between the US and Australia) alternates between metric and imperial measurements (it'll be metric for one cycle through the speed/altitude/time remaining/map cycle, then imperial for the next cycle).

Not sure where the GP lives but it's like that in Australia. The ATO makes software called e-tax that walks you through the tax return forms in a questionnaire-type way, pre-populating what it can, and at the end gives you an estimate of refund (or amount owing), and you click to submit it (after going through an identity-validation process that involves unique numbers printed on your previous years' tax returns).

The pre-population of data has got better and better over the years. A decade ago it only really populated your salary (PAYG certificate info, analogous to US W-2s) and even then it was hit and miss. But last year it was great. It accurately pre-populated virtually everything for me: all income, bank account interest and investment returns, medical expenses (through the universal healthcare system), etc. My contact details and bank account info to receive payment of the return hadn't changed since the previous year so I didn't even need to update those.

I'm a dual US-Australian citizen and by comparison, my US taxes took literally weeks of mundane record gathering and work, even using software :( Part of this is the fact that US states levy income tax and I had received income in several US states (so had 3 or 4 separate returns to do). In Australia there's only Federal tax thankfully.

However, even ignoring that, the US Federal return took far longer and lodgement is far less streamlined than the Australian system. The Australian process was literally 15 minutes of clicking "next", "next", "next", and all done.

Similar in Australia. Validation for online lodgement of taxes with the ATO (Aust. Tax Office) requires:

- Tax File Number (analogous to ITIN in US or SIN in Canada)
- Reference ID number from previous year's Notice of Assessment
- An amount paid or owed, from a previous year's NoA or other bill

I am not aware of any identity theft or security breach that has occurred through this system, which has been running for over a decade.