we had that extra capacity problem down here in southeastern AZ. Last week, my daughter in law took our 2 year old grandson home from the hospital, 80 miles from home, where he'd been med-evaced less than two days before with severe pneumonia. She was told he was released at 4 PM (of course the billing cycle ends at midnight) and he need to vacate the room since it was needed for someone else. Hard to believe that a child that sick could suddenly be that well--and he wasn't!

Wish we had some of those extra beds down here--minus the expensive fountain, of course.

First of all, I grew up in Canada and the line in this article saying that Canadians wait in line for health care is simply a lie spread by US health providers who don't want to end their greedy control on health care.

I've never had extraordinary wait times to get medical treatment in Canada. In actuality, I've had longer wait times here in Utah than I ever had in Canada. Every time I want to see a doctor here in Utah, there's 1-3 months wait just to get an appt. And then you wait forever in the lobby of the doctor's office to see the doctor. I had lower wait times in Canada.

What the health care industry needs is competent doctors in private practice not affiliated with restrictive health care facilities who over charge for services to pay investors. A private practice doctor if available would be more able to handle the minor medical care most families need.

That is why many people put off routine doctor visits, the hospitals have run them out of town. Routine health care has become a nightmare of no new doctors practicing medicine. Now you have to pre-diagnose what ails you then its a billing game to find the specialist for that ailment.

If a person goes in and says they want to pay when leaving, forget it. You're booted out the door like a homeless vagrant.

The need for hospitals would not be necessary if you could find a doctor in private practice that can provide for peoples routine needs at a much lower cost.

There must be some very lucrative corruption in health care to build such expensive and lavish hospitals.

All other arguments aside, having some extra beds isn't a terrible thing, is it? Don't we keep hearing that if the swine flu explodes on us (and it looks very possible to reach that point), we very soon won't have the hospital space for all the sick people?

You must have lived in a different Canada than I did. Canadian healthcare almost killed me. I went in for a stomach ache and they told me to go home. I had the stomach ache for nearly a week and I was in excruciating pain. They told me I was just having gas pain. I finally went back in so hunched over that I could barely walk, and they determined I had an intestinal blockage. So then the doctor tried to do some Chinese healing method to help clear it. After two more days and no results, I was nearly dead. They flew me back to the United States and within a few hours had me in to clear the blockage. They said if I had gone another day I would have died. And when I went in to that first doctor in Canada, my wait was over three hours, just to tell me I had gas. Stupid Canadian medicine!!

@To: Canadian. Just because you had a bad experience should not be taken as evidence that the system as a whole is that way. I am sure that people at hospitals in the United States have had equally bad care given to them. Lets look at the statistical evidence, not anecdotal stories. If we do that, it is clear that Canada's system is better overall than the U.S. system.