I arrived on a Friday evening, so I originally hoped to tough it out as Americans would, but the relentless cough kept me awake for the entirety of the first night, despite being jet lagged and not having slept in over a day and a half.

So instead of waiting until Monday, I called the doctor on Saturday, and less than an hour later, there was a knock on the door. The doctor told me I had bronchitis. Since my contract wasn’t due to start for another week, I had no health coverage whatsoever. So for the weekend emergency doctor visit I had to front the grand total of…forty bucks. (Does anyone by any chance know how much this service would cost in the USA?)

After my contract had begun, I then had coverage. I went to the doctor once; the visit cost a dollar and I was reimbursed 99% for medication. Later on I had my teeth cleaned, x-rayed, a wisdom tooth extracted along with prescribed pain killers and a filling - all, in four different visits, for a grand total of about five dollars fifty cents.

After watching Moore’s film, I asked my Canadian friends about the health care system. They said it wasn’t 100% free and complained about sometimes paying as much as $10-15 for prescribed medication.

Good on Moore for tackling this issue, though it seems improbable that anything will come of it. Didn’t Hillary spend 8 years trying to reform health care already?

Unfortunately, with a radical conservative government in the pocket of the Bushites, we are heading down the road to adopting, not just US health care policy, but the entirety of the free-market, small government, capitalist system. Saints preserve us.

Whereas in the US, you hope that nothing like that happen. And if it does, you first worry about what’s covered and what’s not. And then you worry about the bill you’ll receive (or not).

As Moore pointed out (and some British MP), by keeping us frightened and weak and unhealthy, we won’t fight the government. In the US, people fear the govt. Elsewhere, it’s the opposite.