I just had to reply to Tommywishbone's post.
I lived in the United States for a decade and loved it. Like all countries in the world, it has pluses and minuses.
The only radical deviation I see from the rest of the developed world is its health care system.
To put it bluntly, it's medieval. It's a terribly convoluted system that makes Soviet era Russia look transparent by comparison. It's horrendously expensive, it doesn't cover one fifth of the population at all, and the rest, have variations of cover ranging from woeful to wonderful. I could go on and on but I won't.
What I will do is give an example of a hip replacement that I had. I had a total hip replacement (top of the line Stryker prosthetic with ceramic cup and ball), seven days in hospital and rehab, all covered by the public health care system here in Australia (which everyone pays into). My total spend was..................... ........................ ........................ ......nothing.
When I showed my surgeon a bill (Like Tommy's) for a 23 hour stay with exploratory surgery in the States ($60,000.00). He couldn't stop laughing. He's on the board of many committees that explore the financial side of delivering health care and has gone to the States many, many times. His conclusion was, that greed had consumed the system over there.
I couldn't help but agree.
The States is wonderful place to live, just don't get seriously sick.