currently the mornings here are -6 C so not conducive to anyone let alone
anyone with a camera :-)
I was up at 5AM today so I could take my little girl down to Sydney so she
could fly out to Vietnam for 3 weeks, the frost was so thick I had to
de-frost the car doors before I could even open them :-)
so forgive me if I say "Bugger going for a morning walk at the moment"

Indeed we do.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdaj/844539140/
Surprisingly, this is only about 200m from a city area. The
city goes up to the edge of the range escarpment, then it
falls away some 400m into the Lockyer valley below.
The morning I took that it was a lovely -1C. Normally at
those temps there would be frost, but it does require
moisture to have frost. Lower down on in the valley there is
some moisture (although it is warmer down there), but up
here it has been dry as a bone for an extended period of
time as we are in the grip of the worst drought on record.
Plants will get frost-bitten but there won't be any sign of
frost on the ground.

And of how many capitalist drones take a cut of it along the way.

Bob

Absolutely right.  (We _can_ agree on something I guess Tony!).
However, the manner of coverage has effects.

The only advantage of universal health is that any citizen is covered
whether or not he pays taxes.  There is less suffering and one does not
have to make very unpleasant choices when someone is critically ill.

There is much better pre-natal care.  In Quebec, a woman gets up to 1
year of unemployment payments after a baby is born (or this can be 6
months for both parents).  (The politics of negative population growth
are in play and there are many incentives to pop babies out.)

(In the recent The Economist they talk about the British NHS at 60 years
... one of the original premises was that as people got healthier, costs
would reduce.  Of course as people got healthier their expectations for
service grew while they also aged longer requiring more care...)

Still, the life expectancy in Canada is longer that the US and the
infant mortality rate is lower as well.

The disadvantage is that everything averages out, so there are fewer
centers of excellence (cancer, cardiac, etc.) than in the US and
therefore we have longer waits for some tests and procedures.  In
Quebec, there are more and more private clinics/surgeries (not allowed
in most other provinces) but the province will cover most private costs.

We also have brain drain as a radiologist here will pull in $300 - $400K
or half (or less) of what he would get in the US.  So we train 'em (very
costly) and then they bugger off to the US for higher pay.

A cardiac surgeon here would pull in $400K and in the US upwards of
$1.5M (maybe more).

We're also losing nurses to the US.

If you're lucky and healthy, you don't worry.

to a pedant, that is of course true, but to the average Joe who just cut the
tip off his finger and had it stitched up at the local emergency department,
he cares not a jot, as he can walk out without having to put his hand in his
pocket.
regardless of your opinion of the man (Michael Moore), have a look at
"Sicko" to see the current state of the US Health System. All pretty much
confirmed as true by my Brother, who spent a decade working in the US at
some of the largest hospitals in the Country (ER Nurse)