However, Chesnutt had recently struggled with a lawsuit filed by a Georgia hospital after he racked up surgery bills totaling some $70,000, the Athens newspaper reported. He said he couldn't afford more than hospitalization insurance and couldn't keep up with the payments.

The problems baffled his Canadian bandmates, Chesnutt said, "There's nowhere else in the world that I'd be facing the situation I'm in right now. They cannot understand what kind of society would inflict that on their population," he said. "It's terrifying."

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I don't know all the answers to fixing our health care system, but what is life worth when it is more expensive to stay healthy then you can afford to pay in your lifetime?  I do not endorse the present reform bill bouncing around in Congress, but something has to be done to fix a system that costs our government and our people more than anywhere else in the world, while providing care that is ranked 37th.

Time to impliment procedures that are proactive and prevent health issues before they become issues.  Time to bring some sanity back into the cost of the people's health, when without good health the people cannot be productive.  That's "Cutting off your nose to spite your face", my father would say, "Shooting yourself in the foot" is how I say it (which I don't suggest, it would cost more than your foot is worth to fix it, and that's just the antibiotics and pain meds).

What I find so totally amazing is that the Radical Right-Wing Radio Talk Show hosts would have you believe that Canadians are just screaming to have American Health Care and that they are dying under their present Socialist system.  And yet, an American says his Canadian friends can't understand the callous, profit-hungry system we have, that puts a dollar above the patient.  Health Care should be about compassion not money, effective not lucrative, constantly seeking new ways to bring health to the patient not ways to get cash from their wallets.  Health Care, like education, should pay for itself, but just barely, cut costs and more people get served.  Just ask the RR-WRTS hosts, they champion the "Reduce costs(taxes) to businesses so they have more money to serve more people(create more jobs)".  I guess it only applies to obscenely gross-profit ventures.