The next time people keep talking about health care in Canada or the UK...

[YewNork]

Make sure to tell them that there's no plan to implement either style of health reform that those countries have.

Point them toward Australia's health system. It has a public plan that everyone can access, but people are free to buy private health insurance (or to be provided with it by their employer).
In most cases when people buy private health insurance, they are eligible for a tax credit of 30% of the cost of that insurance.

But, the public plan is there if that's all they have.

Australia's plan is the closest one that the current proposed legislation wants to implement.

[MarjorieG]

1. Are we proposing inability to crossover if employer covered as temporary or permanent?

[YewNork]

2. Can you rephrase?

[supernova]

4. If I understand correctly,

it means that if you already have say an employer-sponsored plan, you won't be elegible for the public plan, and vice versa. I don't know that that's what will happen, but that's what that post says to me.

[YewNork]

5. Don't think so

[enlightenment]

3. I don't think it's that close of a match.

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/healthsystem-overview-3-funding

It is a public health care plan, paid for by a tax.
From the website above:
The major part of the national health care system is called "Medicare". Medicare provides high quality health care which is both affordable and accessible to all Australians, often provided free of charge at the point of care. It is financed largely from general taxation revenue, which includes a Medicare levy based on a person’s taxable income.

The public option being mooted here is an insurance plan, subsidized by the government and presumably administered by some sort of 'agency' (most likely, farmed out to a private company).

My response to people who suggest the system being proposed is similar to Canada and the UK is "no; you just wish it was . . ."

[Liberal Veteran]

6. Or better yet, ask them why they feel they have to prove our system is better by spreading untruths.

If our system is so great, then why aren't other countries falling all over themselves to implement our system?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Not to mention the fact that the UK and Canada have totally different systems

Yet right-wingers talk as if they're exactly the same.

[YewNork]

8. As far as they view them, they're the same, because they cover everyone.