Pyrit wrote: Employers in other countries pretty much don't need to worry about the cost of staff health insurance, where all citizens are covered anyway.

So way off base. In France, where health coverage is supposed to be a model for Americans to follow, your payslip is so full of deductions for all the ''free'' help the govt ''offers'', it's depressing.

If I earned 100 euros, 20 - 25 of that went to pay for health care (that I was not entitled to myself because I worked part-time) of the working French, indigents, illegal immigrants and the perpetual unemployed, French or not.

My employer paid the govt about twice what I paid in each pay period.

In France, when you hire someone, you pay that person a salary, for example, and you pay about the same, if not more, to the govt for that same employee each and every month! And you can't fire them unless you can justify a fault on their part, most of the time.

So, if you hire someone for 2000 euros a month, you are, in fact, committing to at least another 2000 on top of that each month.

To write that employers don't worry is insane. They do worry and they do pay. Universal coverage works okay in SMALL countries with a limited population to maintain. But the USA is 300 million plus. Can you not see the burden that imposes on American citizens?

Yes, CITIZENS. Because the money that the govt spends comes from US, not some magic bank acct somewhere. US, you and me.

Can you imagine having to pay for all the people you know who don't pay or won't pay or can't pay? Immigrants who hijack ER resources and leave the debt for US? People who will think going to the doctor is ''free'' and abuse the system because they can? (It's so common in France; human nature is what it is.)

It's a wonderful wish to see everyone covered but it should NOT be done on a federal level. Hell, I live in Hawaii now and the darn state govt takes more out of my pay than the feds because they force you to pay for health and social services for everyone.

Temporary help is totally understandable - life happens. But to provide life-long care for people who can't, don't or won't give into the system is committing financial suicide. Who is going to cover the debt? The govt? Yeah, right. By taxing US.

Be prepared to PAY for your desire to be like Japan or France or Germany. Health care is never free. Someone pays. Always.

And don't assume that because places like Japan or S Korea have universal coverage that the care they all get is exemplary and that the citizens there never abuse the system.

I work with people from one of those countries and they go get acupuncture treatments that last for weeks for illnesses that would be easily cured with Western medecine in 2 days. They get excuses from work for things like ''low energy'' and ''indigestion''.

In France, in larger cities, there are doctors who are well-known for handing out excuses like candy. It's disgraceful.

My own doctor there had to work until 9pm almost every evening and open up by 7:30 in the morning to handle the patient load. AND do house calls. People there go to the doctor sometimes for nothing. They want to get their paracetemol for free, so they go to the doctor to get a prfescription rather than just going to the pharmacy and paying out of pocket, for heaven's sake.

It's great when you really are sick. But the waste and abuse is nearly unchecked. And someone pays for all of it. The citizen who works hard for a living.

yeah, and the content of your posts here at neatorammit? the constant desire to bash and preach? THAT, surely, is due to the temperature outside. SURELY.

You wrote: ''The stories of Columbus celebrate him as an all-time American hero..''

What? Where did you get that from? A bady translated cereal box?

Columbus is not celebrated as a hero. He's celebrated as a navigator and explorer. And ''all-time American'' is just super silly. He's not an ''American'' hero... He wasn't American. Americans did not exist in his day.

WHAT is WRONG with this website??? All the anti-USA cr*p on here is getting really tired.

Again.

I already gave up reading this site before because of all the USA-bashing and pro-Obama garbage.

Came back to see what was up, seemed like you'd got over some of your need to preach. Guess I was wrong.

Adios.

oh, plz. what rights have you lost since 9/11? be honest. what rights? I ain't lost none of my rights. free as I ever was.

are your phones bugged? is your mail being opened? do you no longer have the right to speak freely here?

plz, get over all your ''me me'' needs and think about, for a change, what a government has to do to try and protect its people, will ya? what would you do if you were responsible for 300 million people? huh?

be honest.

great song? nope. it repeats itself and then repeats itself again. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

lots of liberal hogwash in there. families of ''all kinds''? Oh, yeah, that's gonna help the ''world'', alright. Sheesh.

surprised the nuclear power idea got thru.

seen things out of TED that were much more interesting.

Geez, whatever happened to wearing appropriate attire for yearbook pix and such? Are there no parents out there looking at what their children are wearing to go to school?

It's not censorship. Just good judgment. That type of t-shirt, with incredibly large letters on it, isn't really appropriate to a yearbook. It would make the school look as if it were tacitly agreeing with what the shirt says, that's all.

How hard is that to get? The boy is no victim. If he'd had a little common sense to begin with, no one would have ever bothered him and his dumb t-shirt.

For heaven's sake. Schools are a place of learning, not of letting you do whatever you want blah blah blah.

Somewhat sad, really. Poor Beaker.

Wow, if that said anything other than ''caucasian'', it would be scandalous to those who scream about racism every chance they get, wouldn't it.

The service in French hotels/restos is almost always lacking in large cities and very touristic areas. The reason a French waiter can be a jerk ,especially to an obvious tourist, is that he/she is not dependent upon tipping to make a living.

As for saying that people treat service workers like garbage all the time, that's truly exaggeration. Most people are polite when making a request. And, after all, if you want someone to be polite to you, service workers, try being polite FIRST. It's part of your job.

I lived in France for 20 years and, in the end, was so fed up with the cr*p some workers in supermarkets and bistros would try to give me, I would tell them off in perfect French and leave. It's the only way to deal with that kind of disrespect: tell them they've lost a client and go spend your money where you can at least get a smile and a thank you.

Did you understand the article? They are asking the restaurants that make non-Italian cuisine to BUY their ingredients in Italy rather than bring them from foreign countries.

This is a good thing to do because the quality of what many of these restuarants bring in is BAD and even dangerous.

When I was living in France, it was on the news many times that asian resturants were using meat and fish that they bought cheap. Why was it cheap? Because it was unsafe! Thawed products that were re-frozen; meat that had been expired for months, even years was being cooked and sold.

The Italians are right to worry.

Adios. Fed up with your persistent obama posting.

I feel like I'm living in Mao's China.

enough with the obama stuff on neatorama! enough already!

LOL luv it

Wow, why all the mcdo hate? It's a company. If people don't like it, they can stop eating there. Did anyone ever FORCE you to eat a BigMac?

Mcdo actually tries out different styles of restaurants all over the world. I saw an interesting program about it on the Travel channel, or maybe the Food channel not too long ago.

They have a drive-thru for snow skis in Finland, I think. And a very chic one in the middle of Rome! Why not? They may want to upgrade their image in a few years...

I read some of the comments here and it seems that the point of the photoshopped pic is neing missed.

Isn't the person who did this asking for white people to not vote McCain just because he's white? LOL How lefty of him!

And how condescending to the apparently vast number of white Americans who have been pro-obama for months and months now.

Or is he perhaps trying to get black people to look at the issues rather than just voting obama? Now, THAT would have been interesting.

Somehow, I doubt it is aimed at blacks. (Google Howard Stern's Harlem interviews if you haven't heard about them.) Black people who think Palin is obama's VP voting black is fine, no prob. Black for black, that's cool.

(I am not saying that all black people are voting for obama. But everyone knows that many are.)

But whites voting WHITE isn't cool, is it. Obviously. That is racist. Uh huh. Downright racist.

Double standards.