My friend Ross has a perfect example of why our healthcare system is so flawed :

While I think we can make the US a brilliant place, a country that constantly makes progressive advances, generally the kind of nation we believe we are, these days we’re way off the mark, and nations like Canada are embarrassing us with their moral generosity and worth.

Take our wretched health care system. My roommate, a Quebecoise, recently needed to have an extremely important medical procedure (to investigate a potential heart defect) performed. She’s insured, but to have the procedure done here in Los Angeles, she would still have been responsible for, roughly, $30,000.00 in expenses. Fortunately, she’s a Canadian citizen. For the price of a $700.00 plane ticket, and the willingness to make an appointment which would require her to wait about 24 hours, she flew home to Canada and had the procedure done for free.

Meanwhile, children, children who have the horrible bad luck to be poor, American, and suffering from cancer, have to hold fundraisers in order to receive the kind of care that Canadians can get for free. The fact that people in this country insist that we have the best health care in the world might just be among the most vicious lies ever perpetrated on us.

The current for-profit model that we’ve got for health care in this country is goddamn shameful. We wouldn’t put up with police or firefighters who only respond to emergencies that could make them money, why do we put up with this shit when it comes to medicine? (Yeah, I know it’s a flawed analogy because emergency rooms aren’t legally allowed to turn people away, but you know what I mean.) Not that Kerry’s healthcare proposal is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he he has plans to get more people covered in the screwed-up system. As opposed to Bush’s devotion to the status quo, I think it’s a damn good start.

Also from the same post, Ross links to this Dan Savage column that highlights an embarrassing example of political correctness run amok :

I know your liberal heart means well, Dan, but the response you gave to SAUDI typifies much that is wrong with Western attitudes toward the Middle East.

While SAUDI is partially to blame for having the poor judgment to ask you about sexual ethics, your statement, “Unlike the country you left behind, there are no morals police in the part of North America where you live” smacks of haughty, imperialistic condescension. You totally ignored the fact that the values he was taught as a Muslim have a deep and completely valid cultural context that needs to be considered when dispensing advice. You reduced the conundrum of a devout man experiencing serious cultural conflict to the influence of the “morals police,” and in quite a smirking tone. I don’t care how progressive Canadians are. It is incredibly offensive to imply the superiority of morals in Canada to values taught in Saudi Arabia. To paraphrase Gandhi, have some goddamned cultural sensitivity, man.
Sick Of Stereotypes

Did I imply the superiority of morals in Canada to values taught in Saudi Arabia? Jesus H. Christ, SOS, I feel terrible about that. So let me set the record straight: I never meant to imply the superiority of morals in Canada over values taught in Saudi Arabia. I meant to state, loudly and clearly and for the record, the absolute superiority of morals in Canada over values taught in Saudi Arabia.

Let us count the ways in which Canada is superior: equality of the sexes, political and religious pluralism, a little thing called democracy, and, of course, the radical notion that consenting adults are free to have sex with other consenting adults without having to worry about being lashed or beheaded in public. Canada’s also got vodka tonics, BC bud, and pornography going for it, along with Tim Hortons, pork-sausage gravy on fries, and a just and equitable social-welfare system. Is Canada morally superior to Saudi Arabia? You bet. It’s also morally superior to the United States of America.

But back to the big SA: Unless you believe that cutting off the heads of homosexuals has a “deep and completely valid cultural context,” or that men treating women as their property is a “value,” you have to acknowledge that Saudi Arabia practices and promotes a thoroughly fucked-up brand of Islam. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s state-sanctioned “morals police” are not, as you imply, an imperialistic fantasy of mine. They are, sadly, a fact of everyday life for Saudi Arabian women, gays, atheists, moderate/non-Wahabi Muslims, and anyone else who fails to live up to the pinched, sex-negative, deeply psychotic brand of monotheism practiced there.

To paraphrase the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I believe that human rights are universal, man. As Saudi Arabia exists in this universe, I think that the humans there?Muslim or not, liberal or conservative, male or female, gay or straight?are entitled to their full human rights. Until that day comes, SOS, I’m going to go right on thinking that Canada kicks Saudi Arabia’s ass when it comes to morals and values. And bud.

I think Bill Maher put it best with “Don’t be so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance”.

To bring this back to politics, it’s pussies (to use the Team America terminology) like this who perpetuate the stereotype that liberals are unable to see the big picture when it comes to terrorism. I don’t like the Republican party, but I’m under no illusions that they’re as bad as the Islamic fundamentalists that we’re at “war” with. My concern (among many) is that the policies and attitudes of Bush and co. are actually making the problem worse. So while I have a special kind of hatred for assholes like bin Laden and Hussein, I don’t get to vote against either one of them.