Depends where you work. I don't have a work contract, just like most everyone else in the US.

The world at large should consider it mostly not your problem when someone opens a credit card account in your name. It should be as simple as saying "Nope, not me!", and it's actually the credit card company that has been defrauded, not you. That's why I really hate the term identity theft. I had that happen to me, and my identity wasn't stolen. I still had it. My credit card company was defrauded to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, but I was mildly annoyed and had to spend a few minutes confirming that a few purchases weren't made by me.

I think it should still be considered a criminal act, and obviously things like changing your medical record or arrest record can have very serious consequences, but it's a positive that creditors understand that when this happens, THEY have a problem. I much prefer that to them coming after me and trying to stick me with the consequences of their lax security.

Oh, easily. People who don't get paid tend not to provide service. If you think you're going to go to the hospital and get whatever is medically necessary and now and again the hospital gets stiffed, I think you're wrong. There will be some sort of coordination where the hospital will find out or know in advance what they'll get paid for, so that single payer becomes the de facto controller of your care.

It's not much different than insurance now. The typical policy has things it just won't pay for, limits on some things, things which require preapproval (and sometimes they say no). You can switch doctors all day long and that won't change what your insurance policy pays for. If you want that, you need to switch insurance policies or companies...unless you can't, because there is only one.

Of course you have people who are not happy with their healthcare... They actually used it.
I can promise that any problems they have are NOTHING compared to the USA.

No, you can't, actually. The US is where they went when they weren't satisfied with Canadian care.

I'm really sorry for what you experienced. That must have been a nightmare. It sounds like outright fraud...but that's not a systemic problem with US healthcare. One of mine spent a month and a half in the hospital, a reasonable portion of that in the NICU. Aside from one medical record error which was the fault of a transcriptionist, the care and payment was flawless. To this day I don't know what all that cost, but I wasn't making much at the time, and whatever it cost me wasn't enough to remember.

Then that would be interesting, IF they could guarantee that it wouldn't ever be worse. If you've ever paid attention to my (US) government, you'd know that's not the case. Case in point, I think the ACA is, on balance, a good thing, but there's a very vocal minority who would repeal it in a heartbeat if they could.

It's the IF that's the problem, though. I don't live with a government that has a track record of doing things well all the time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Americans really do seem to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

There's a lot of truth in that, tbh.

The country that got to be rich and powerful by innovation and thought is all for more of that in the medical space. I switched insurance plans last year. Give me a better option and I'll switch again. All I'm saying is don't take away the thing I chose because I like it, then give me something else and tell me it doesn't matter if I like it because it's the only game in town. That's not innovation.

You're describing one system, not all systems that use single-payer. I can't remember if it was Germany or a Nordic nation that was profiled, but for them you just showed up for GP visits.

Saying, in effect, that some countries do it right and some don't really makes my point. If you implement this in a nation of 300,000,000 people where moving to another country is kind of a very big deal, you're hosed if your country doesn't do it right.

Now consider that I live in a country that periodically shuts its government down because they can't even pass a budget.

No, they're simply not linked. That other people need stuff is a fact. I'm not averse at all to society helping out people with genuine need. My personal viewpoint is that my place in the world is just a moment in time. I as well as my family and friends could be in very different circumstances in the future. For that matter, some of my family are really not well off anyway. I just disagree with the notion that because a subset of people can't provide something for themselves, we should have the government provide it for everybody. There's another option, that being provide it for just the people who can't provide it for themselves who actually want it.

Homeless people need somewhere to live, but that doesn't mean the government should start building houses and assign everyone one. Some people don't have food, but I don't want a government ratio crate on my doorstep every week. I want the right to pick my own provider, and the right to fire them when they do a bad job.

People always say that, yet I have extended family in Canada who aren't happy with health care there.

I'm expecting exactly what I said. Single payer means if that single payer screws it up, you don't have an alternative to jump ship. Sometimes the government does a good job at things. Sometimes they don't. I'm just choosing not to indulge in the naivete that some wish to and believe that giving a job to government automatically means it'll be done well.

Really, if single payer is so wonderful, just let people opt in to Medicare for $amount. There's no need to conscript every living person in the US to go with you if they don't want to.

Single payer just means no options. If your single payer is great, wonderful. If it's not, you're hosed and have no options.

Personally, I think it's just a pipe dream/standard appeal to authority. "Somebody else handle this and do a good job!" Well, yeah, sure. What if you give it to someone else and they do a bad job?

No real risk, beyond that of inconvenience. All it does is shut your computer down. It's not wiping anything or physically damaging the hardware, it's just turning it off and relying on you using full disk encryption to actually protect your data.

Sounds like you watched "House of Cards", too.

No, he didn't. Creating those pre-embryos did nothing beyond preserving the option to have those children later.

From TFA:

She called Szafranski, a nurse, paramedic, and firefighter, and asked if he would provide sperm so that she could freeze embryos for possible future use.

The guy was helping his girlfriend of not that many months preserve the possibility of having children later, not signing up for a lifetime of child care for up to 8 kids regardless of what happens later.

This sounds quite plausible to me. I can't imagine an ENTIRE class full of people behaving the way the prof suggests. Some, sure, but all?

I had a much more minor incident long ago where a prof sent all the students interim reports warning us that we were failing the course. Imagine my surprise, since I had an A average in the class (it was a math class with clearly defined grading, so tracking my grade was possible and easy). When I asked him about it, he admitted he made a mistake. So many people were failing, he forgot the one or couple who weren't. No real harm done, but I can't say my end of course review for him was stellar.

You're still bringing your own preconceptions, not mine. If you want to assume me a bad person, go ahead, but I have no idea if "a lot of beggars" are "master criminals". Those are your words. All I've said is that some nonzero percentage are lying. I don't know if that percentage is 2% or 98%. It's even possible that some who are lying actually need help. Maybe the jail guy really needed money and was just telling a lie he thought was more likely to get him money.