Terrific vision, Redneck Ma! Mine would be a lot like yours, and it would include coverage of vision care.
Up here in New York State, we have state income tax, city income tax if you live in New York City (which I don't), and high property taxes (at least on Long Island, where I live). I'm talking annual property taxes of $8,000 on a puny 1,400-square-foot 40-year-old home, vastly overvalued at about $325,000. Even with all of that, I'd gladly pay increased income taxes because in the long run, health care costs would go down because they'd be covered for everyone.
I'm curious what your physician spouse's vision looks like.
Re: poor people and tax: y'all is familiar with a graduated tax system, yes?
As for health... ask Google how the medicare system in Australia works, and what you can get with your Medicare card (not dentists, unfortunately).
Loving the peacock, btw.
Vision, yes! Graduated tax system, absolutely. I live in a state with no income tax but with a very high sales tax, which is of course pretty damned regressive. Sometimes I forget there's another way.
Still, even with a graduated tax, conservative politicos will raise a stink about the effect on "working families."
I'm curious what your physician spouse's vision looks like.
Shhhh! Don't tell my writer husband about my doctor husband! Actually, my husband's career in medicine was a fabrication of my health-insurance company. They decided he was an out-of-network doctor instead of my son's father and summarily denied an urgent-care claim. Took months for them to cough up.
D'oh! Blame my misidentification of your husband on perimenopause-induced mental fuzziness. 
On the Canada tip: in this John Scalzi interview with Robert Sawyer (Canada's top sci-fi writer), Sawyer credits Canada's socialized medicine system for allowing him to become a full-time writer at age 23, instead of having to schlep through a bunch of go-nowhere jobs like a lot of U.S. writers, artists, et al.
Here's the link.
Amen.
I think one interesting idea to float is that people who take advantage of preventive care incentives -- yearly checkups with doctor and dentist, physical fitness services, one free annual visit with a nutritionist, annual tests for diabetes and high blood pressure, etc. -- would get to pay lower co-pays for treatment. It would incentivize healthy behavior and proactive care and should help reduce more significant care costs, such as drugs and other interventions.
I for one wouldn't mind an increase in taxes if it meant no insurance crap. I'm in a situation of having just gotten married and gone off my parents' insurance (Which of course I'd always taken for granted as a comfortable middle class kid) while still in school. Insurance? Forget it. I make just barely enough money so that non-insurance care is not an option and not enough to handle insurance costs. I keep wondering how many other newly-adult people are having the same problem and waking up to just how badly this whole system sucks.
I keep wondering how many other newly-adult people are having the same problem and waking up to just how badly this whole system sucks.
I certainly did, years ago. I found myself in my first full-time reporting job in a tiny market with no benefits. I drove very carefully and tried to stay out of the doctor's office.
One of my relatives is postponing marriage b/c he's uninsured and marriage would invalidate the health insurance his girlfriend and son get on her parents' plan. Hear that, conservatives? The magic of the free market is promoting living in "sin!"
I can't tell you how many people I know who have forgone needed medication because they had no coverage after graduation and couldn't afford their drugs, resulting in all kinds of problems, large and small.
I like that vision very well, and would also add vision coverage and the "wacky" alternative medical treatments like acupuncture and massage as well. Wouldn't we all be a lot better off if we could get a massage for stress relief once a week? All the newly unemployed insurance workers could be retrained as massage therapists and work from their homes or neighborhoods.
To pay for it, I like two approaches: one, we'd have a heck of a lot more money if we weren't flushing it down the toilet in Iraq (Bring them home safely!)and two, a regressive tax that hits high income people with higher percentages than low income people. I'm evil that way.
To your list, I'd add eye care, which also seems to be considered an 'extra' that is often not covered.
I would say that any employer who employs more than "x" number of full-time employees in the U.S. should be forced to pay into a universal health care system (regardless of where the company is headquartered) and that taxes should take care of the rest. If the money I currently spend on health insurance was given to a universal health care plan instead, I wouldn't mind one bit.
Oh, and I love Constance's idea about incentives for those who take care of themselves in a proactive way. Couple that with the British notion of giving doctors bonuses for getting their patients' cholesterol down, getting them to quit smoking, etc.; and what a beautiful world it would be ...
I have been a proponent of a nationalized health care system for years. I am sick of the "I got mine mentality" as well. If we actually got out and voted, we would at least stand a chance at having our tax dollars go for things we need, like health and education and not for some ego building war because a mental defective has been left in charge of the White House. I for one would happily pay more out of my weekly income if I knew it meant that not only I, but my friends, neighbors, daughter, grandkids and even the conservative morons that rail against people like me, would get the care they need. Oh, yeah, dental and vision.
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