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I'm a Canadian, and I'd totally give up single payer insurance to pay thousands of dollars a month in premiums for coverage that some dink for-profit insurance company will fight tooth and nail to renege on. Yep. Bring that on. I want to fight lawyers on $600 epipens.Here's what's truthful about Canadian healthcare: it's not perfect. But it's affordable, no one goes left behind, and when you're really in need, things happen at lightning speed. As fast as or faster than the US system, with quality of care that's as high as or higher than yours. By the way, I was being sarcastic about adopting American-style healthcare. Your system is the most expensive in the world, and lags far behind those of other advanced economies. Far behind.Stop using other countries as your shit shill to justify the AHCA. It was a massive step backwards for your society and only furthers the divide between rich and poor. Stop being so damned entitled and come together as a people. Take care of one another, because doing that strengthens your economy and the moral fabric of your society at the same time. Aren't those American values?The idea that someone doesn't deserve health insurance because they haven't worked hard enough, well that just makes anyone who thinks that way a fucking asshole. Be better. Be an example for the entire world. Be great again, America.Right now, you're being a total arse to your citizens and the world is noticing.Edit:Originally this was posted as a reply to comment from a Quoran who suggested that my answer was wrong because Obamacare was a failure and people with “socialized medicine” only wait in lines (paraphrasing them, and thank you for adding that comment - it adds an important dimension to the question).Question was about healthcare in Canada and what we thought of the US system. Not about what is or isn't good about Obamacare- which by the way, isn't anything like single payer insurance or “socialized medicine” (what exactly is that, anyway?). You're right that Obamacare was a failure, just like the AHCA will be.Healthcare isn't McDonald's, mate. When you're in a line here, it's because your issue isn't life threatening. You can always go to a private clinic and pay out of pocket to skip the line if you so choose. This isn't communist Russia.On medical innovation? You're dead wrong. The pace of technological advancement has nothing to do with who pays the insurance bill, it's about the market opportunity. I would argue that single payer insurance would create more of a capitalist incentive to develop technology because the pool of capital available per decision maker agency is a lot bigger. Single payer insurance in Canada in 2014 wrote expenditures of about $220 billion dollars. That's not exactly chump change.Medical innovations to come out of Canada, a country with “socialized medicine”?Synthetic insulin.The polio vaccine.The discovery of stem cells.The yuzpe regimen.Ex vivo lung perfusion.The discovery of t-cells.The first effective radiation therapy treatment for cancer (and the cobalt-60 reactors that made it possible).Open heart surgery.The first infant meningitis vaccine.Acticoat.The first stable smallpox vaccine with a shelf life long enough to be transported to remote regions.The first electron microscope that could actually fit inside a room.The list could go on. Medical research isn't funded by insurance payers here- it's funded by grants from the public treasuries, academic institutions, public-private partnerships, and private enterprise. Just like in your country.PS, hospitals and medical agencies in Canada aren't owned by the state. Largely, they're private enterprises and private practitioners, just like in the US. The difference is that *insurance* is largely provided by the provincial governments. This helps control profit-centric inflationary pressures in cost. Private insurance exists here, and is frequently bought to cover frills and nice-to-haves among people who want the extras.Total cost of copay for this type of policy? Maybe $200 a month, for the deluxe has-everything variety. Because the burden of cost for expensive, critical treatment is removed from the private insurance industry, these policies are accessible to a big part of the market here. And that industry is massively profitable because of it.Edit 2:A couple of commenters have noted my answer as “blunt.” To be honest, I was on the way home from the pub when I read the question and was mildly inebriated =)And fed up with variations on “why can't those silly Canadians just ditch their backwards healthcare system and be more like the US?” that have been floating around my feed lately.Apologies if my bluntness offended. And piss off if you think that your right to sovereignty and freedom somehow outweighs our right to sovereignty and freedom. You can do what you want inside your walls, we're entitled to the same inside ours. You don't get a say here.Edit 3:I expected any comments on this to be trolls. Thank you for proving me wrong and sharing the kind words that you did. Also thank you to @Susan Swan for pointing out inaccuracies in my post. Clarifications in comment thread.

I have a very clear philosophy on life, but am largely an apolitical person. I try to steer clear of most of the opinion pieces, because they inevitably distort the facts by imparting an altogether too convenient narrative. With that said, when I have access to primary sources, (this is the one I read on CNN.com: Read Trump's phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky), I’ll read them and then maybe venture to have an opinion.I wanted to be a citizen who is well-informed of the actual details of our President’s potential transgressions. I didn’t want to be like most others who are just going to either (a.) do nothing and go on their merry way, or (b.) watch or listen to their favorite comedians and political commentators talk about it and mindlessly believe what these jokers have to say rather than reading for themselves. That’s why I’m copy/pasting it here and commenting on it bit by bit. If you don’t want to read it, I’m sure Rush Limbaugh or Conan O’Brien will put something together for you!UNCLASSIFIEDDeclassified by order of the PresidentSeptember 24, 2019MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONSUBJECT: Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of UkraineParticipants: President Zelenskyy of UkraineNotetakers: The White House Situation RoomDate, Time July 25, 2019, 9:03-9:33 am EDTand Place: ResidenceThere is no reason for Trump not to order this transcript to be declassified, especially given that predictably, those on the far Right are going to say, “Trump can do no wrong,” and those on the far Left are going to say, “Trump can do no right.” Since both of these types of people are full of bovine feces, and are largely going to believe whatever they believe regardless of the facts, we’ll just ignore them as the idiotic ideologues they are, and go on with our analysis like the literate, sane, well-informed human beings that we (hopefully) are. We can assume that this transcript doesn’t contain anything that should be classified for the purpose of national security.The President: Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn't given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It's a fantastic achievement. Congratulations.President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I'm able to tell you the following; the first time you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.So far, this is a normal conversation between two presidents, one with more influence, and one with less. Nothing interesting yet.The President: (laughter) That's a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that.President Zelenskyy: Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.Trump gives approbation, and Zelenskyy gives acknowledgment. Aside from the nature of the conversation being further indicative of their respective positions, there’s still nothing interesting yet.The President: Well it is very nice of you to say that. I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it's something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn't do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it's something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.Okay. Finally we get to an action item: discussing Ukraine’s readiness to purchase more Javelins (infrared-guided anti-tank missiles) from the USA.The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.So, Trump basically wants Ukrainian help in figuring out the whole Russian hacking incident. Here’s a link to the famous Full Mueller Report (on CNN) if you want to read more about that: Read and search the full Mueller report. Interestingly, he didn’t even go to the point of using the Javelins as a bargaining chip. So far, everything seems above-table, and I’d guess that anyone with benign motives from either party should be happy to get down to the truth. So, I don’t see why Republicans or Democrats would take issue with this.President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.Zelenskyy hums and haws a bit, but eventually gets to the point where he says, “all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.” This means that either they are already helping to investigate, or that he intends for Ukraine to help with Trump’s request.The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.Let’s wait until we hear Zelenskyy’s response because that helps to contextualize what Trump’s saying here. Without Zelenskyy’s context, it’s unclear what the whole point is.President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.So, Zelenskyy is going to replace the Ukrainian ambassador to the USA, and is going to look and see if there’s any veracity to the idea that Biden or his son was somehow interfering with the prosecution. Also, this is supposed to be a private call. It’s not like any attention would have been brought to this issue at all was this whole issue not thrust into the spotlight to begin with. I can see how this might appear sketchy, but if the issue involves Ukraine, then I see no reason why this wouldn’t come up in a conversation between Trump and Zelenskyy. Also, Trump is a very straightforward speaker. I’m pretty sure he would have simply asked for dirt on Biden if that were his objective, but it seems that he’s merely asking whether there is any veracity to rumors and Biden’s own alleged claims.The President: Well, she's going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people.President Zelenskyy: I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower. I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future. I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support.The President: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we'll work that out. I look forward to seeing you.President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much. I would be very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you personally and get to know you better. I am looking forward to our meeting and I also would like to invite you to visit Ukraine and come to the city of Kyiv which is a beautiful city. We have a beautiful country which would welcome you. On the other hand, I believe that on September 1 we will be in Poland and we can meet in Poland hopefully. After that, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine.The President: Okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time.President Zelenskyy: Thank you very much Mr. President.The President: Congratulations on a fantastic job you've done. The whole world was watching. I'm not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations.President Zelenskyy: Thank you Mr. President bye-bye.- - End of conversation - -And the rest of the conversation is full of planning and pleasantries…Yeah, I don’t see much here unless you’re looking to read things in a very crooked fashion. Of course, if you adopt a postmodern deconstructionist viewpoint that everything in this world revolves around power, and that there are virtually infinite valid interpretations of any given text, it’s inevitable that you put whatever construction you can on it in order to advance your political agenda. Truth be damned. Many intellectuals have figured out how to read things in that fashion, but I’m convinced that obfuscation of the truth, or fabrication of a narrative for political expediency is a bad long-term plan.With that said, I really don’t see anything in the transcript worth having a fuss about, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.

I asked myself this question some time ago. I felt I was a bit over the hill to be chasing after poachers again, had been out of the bush for a while and imagined there were now younger, fitter and more able chaps to do that work. I had become tied up in managing forestry and other operations and was very much distanced from the rangers and scouts on the ground.Still, I became more and more frustrated about what I was seeing and hearing. I realized the efforts to stop the unfolding disaster were failing dismally. But why? There had been major successes in the 90s and the poaching had been knocked right back in many areas. I started to look into it. I was horrified by what I found.Everything had changed, but nothing had changed. The challenges remained the same, just much, much greater, and the means and knowledge to defeat these challenges had all but disappeared. I realized I could do something, and I also realized that my efforts would be wasted unless EVERYONE did something.I found that the very people who had knocked back the poaching in the nineties were now grown old, had been replaced with younger, less experienced people who had grown up after the liberation wars and counterinsurgency operations of my generation and who had had no training or experience in the very skills needed to win. Very few could track properly and almost none knew how to follow-up poacher spoor as an effective team. Furthermore the will to win was gone and there was no money because there was also no publicity about what was happening.I decided that the only solution was to treat the problem as a critical threat to my own world and that I should do whatever I could and team up with whomever else could help and anyone who could use my expertise. There was no money to pay me, of course, so I offered as much time as I could for free. We began kick to poacher ass big time and we began to completely deter them from areas where we were operating or training teams. The greatest endorsement of my decision to do what I could came from certain politicians and "businessmen" in a certain country who began to make a lot of noise about me, using racial and other slurs to try and smear my name. All nonsense and completely in the face of the obvious achievements. That meant we were upsetting the cash flow...We were making waves!Not only were we making waves, but I made contact with people who also wanted to help by adding their expertise and whose encyclopedic knowledge was different to ours, and that could, combined with our own and other existing and available skills and resources be, developed into a winning strategy.So, I was just doing what I could and Jacob Alekseyev joined me with others in trying to figure out a complete game-changing doctrine. It dramatically improved what we were achieving already. We had a winning strategy. We just needed to train people on the ground. How the hell would we find the money to get into the field more to transfer this knowledge. A couple of weeks here and there was not enough.Along came Lisa Groeneweg. She was not a billionaire or a professional fund-raising organization. She did not decide to do exactly what was needed, SHE DECIDED TO DO WHAT SHE COULD!Lisa started Quorans for a Cause and began spreading the word and asking others to do the same. More and more people joined her and the first money was raised. More and more people joined in and there was more and more publicity. Common people with and without means joined in and OFFERED TO DO WHAT THEY COULD! This support allowed us to get three teams trained in advanced anti-poaching tracking in an area already devastated by poaching and will fund a second course next month for another six teams. During one week of the training alone 28 poachers were arrested. We were refining our methods on the ground too, and more and more requests are coming in all the time for training from all over the continent.None of this would have been possible without a simple decision and will to do what any one individual was able to do within their capacity and means, and to contribute to the combined effort.This is where we are now:We have been approached by desperate organizations all over Africa to train teams, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, and the list continues to grow. There is a desperate need for training and strategies, tactics and skills that provide a solution to how to deter, find and capture poachers, as well as win over communities to help in the effort. These organizations have realized that we have effective, cheap and pragmatic solutions and are willing to go anywhere and do whatever we can to help, whether we are paid or not.The need is so great and the resources are so small that we could not possibly help everyone directly, so we have almost finished a field manual for scouts, rangers and commanders to use.We have been inundated with requests for it. Most importantly, we have been contacted by individuals and organizations wanting to sponsor copies to be supplied to teams in different countries. This book is almost complete and should be finished within weeks.The teams we have already trained are undertaking successful operations right now. They would not be making arrests and deterring if the training had not been done. They would still be wandering around, unsure, unprepared, unable to find the poachers and ill-prepared to take them on if they do find them.We have been approached by more and more experienced rangers, trackers, investigators and ex-special forces soldiers, all of whom believe in what we are doing and are willing to DO WHAT THEY CAN TO HELP. We are able to form and train teams to train the rangers and guides in almost any part of Africa RIGHT NOW. We are NOT suggesting more men and more equipment on the ground and more cost for poor African governments or needy communities, we are offering advanced skills and intelligent strategies that work and we can get them instilled and put to use quickly.The world had started to hear what we are doing and they are realizing it makes sense! The word has been spreading about the fundraising efforts and about what it is being used for. Although people who could donate have not yet necessarily heard or understood the impact of what we are doing, the people involved in the war have and do. If we keep going the public will understand and the funding will come. In the meantime, we will KEEP ON DOING WHAT WE CAN AND WHERE WE CAN.We have signed partnership agreements with ALERT and other such organizations and have voluntarily made them a part of the decision making process on where to go and whom to help and how and where to spend the money, so as to make the most impact and to be as transparent and accountable as possible without compromising the security of the trainers. This is not a one-man-band at any part of the project. It is an inclusive, not an exclusive effort. This is an ENORMOUS relief for me. Not only do I have friends to watch my back on the ground but the pool of knowledge and experience makes us even more effective.So, what can YOU do? The answer is we need a revolution and a revolution does not need one savior it needs EVERYONE TO DO WHAT THEY CAN.DO WHAT YOU CAN!Thank you everyone for your support so far. Regardless of negative and petty comments about achievements versus targets and being let down by the odd Quora-famous plonker, who has his head too far up his own ****, WE ARE GETTING THIS SHIT DONE AND SAVING WILDLIFE and it is because people who care ARE DOING WHAT THEY CAN!!! We just need to keep finding more and more people both on the ground and throughout the world to DO WHAT THEY CAN and the REVOLUTION will be won.We are in the last couple of days of the fundraiser. So far $8000 has been raised. We can stretch that to train two groups of 24, so 48 rangers/scouts or more, including fuel, food and other costs, to find the poachers. We are happy to donate as much of our time as we can too, as we have been doing in the past, so maybe as many as 72 scouts. If people donate more we will be able to train more. If 12 scouts can take down 28 poachers in one week DURING TRAINING, how many will another 72 take down over a year and how many will be deterred from poaching in those areas in a year?If we reach the tipping point of $20k we will be able to train 48 scouts at least. If we hit $80k we will be able to train around 200 scouts, at least, to find the poachers.This is the spot at Daznga Baie in the CAR (Central African Republic) where Sudanese poachers gunned down thirty six forest elephants in a few minutes last year. They were unchallenged.Some of the bones can be seen between the elephant on the left and the closest tree in the left of the pictures. They would not have come and done their filthy work if they had known that there had been a team of well-trained and motivated rangers moving silently and unseen around this area.P.S. I have received some quite aggressive comments from people in the past from people who say that it is more important to fight the market in China. Well, I'm not in China and I don't speak Chinese. That is something someone else could and should do. I can track and find the little shits running around killing these animals for big bucks and I can teach others to do it. That is what I CAN DO and so that is what I do. It would be supremely stupid for me to start learning Chinese and try to convince them not to buy ivory.If you would like to donate or share the campaign please go to:Terrorists Are Targeting Africa's Elephants