You may actually want to read the meticulously researched 'IBM And The Holocaust' by Edwin Black. There were IBM tabulating machines in concentration camps. There is one on display at the Holocaust Museum in NY I believe. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.... I've read it, twice, and it is a damning indictment of corporate collaboration with IBM as the solution provider for the German war machine, occupations, mass imprisonment and executions. They worked hand in hand in the coding, maintenance and distribution of a census gathering IT infrastructure. Germany would have done this anyway but not as efficiently as they did with IBM's help. They funneled that money through Swiss banks. It's a secret IBM would rather forget, like Watson's admiration of Hitler...oh and the medal he received from him personally. They knew. This speaks to the environment at the time especially when you see what folks like Henry Ford were doing, spreading antisemitic propaganda in Ford owned newspapers, and books that were taken up by the racial policy folks in Germany. Ford admired Hitler greatly and was a rabid anti-semite. It's all part of the documentary record and conveniently ignored in the west.

Perhaps that is true of Watson Jr, who had a more public philanthropic image, but Sr. was a piece of work. I've read 'IBM And The Holocaust' cover to cover, a thoroughly researched and scholarly work - - http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.... and it's profoundly disturbing what was done in the name of profit. In the modern era you just need to look at IBM's record at stepping into South Africa during apartheid to help scoop up more profits. Profit and not morality is what drives most companies, especially if there are analyst expectations. IBM is no different. It seems treasonous to me that the current execs behave in a fashion that allows them to gorge themselves at the expense of the already hollowed out middle class in North America and sadly, I'm sure they sleep just fine.

These are complex issues with no 'silver bullet' answer.

I would imagine that in the US it would be difficult to retro-fit a Canadian or UK style system given the power of lobby groups - from the doctors, to the insurance companies and to the pharmaceutical industry - in your style of government.

The world seems to be heading in the direction that John Brunner wrote about many years ago in 'The Sheep Look Up'

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion.

Cheers.

Oh yeah, and you don't even treat your vets with respect either -

Harvard researchers say 1.46 million working-age vets lacked health coverage last year, increasing their death rate - Over 2,200 veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health insurance

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/november/over_2200_veterans_.php

I find this a fascinating debate -

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found.

You have over 45 million people without insurance - to quote the article: "For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And yes, I'm Canadian. Our system is not perfect...but that doesn't happen.