As someone who lives in a country with socialized medicine, (Canada), the discussion of hospitals removing "normal" (shared) rooms to replace them with more-profitable private rooms is disturbing.

Here, private rooms have become the standard that all new hospitals are built to. Not only are patients generally happier, but they drastically reduct the spread of germs between patients in hospitals. When my kids were born, (they're quite young - <6 years old), my wife had a private room. When my son was hospitalized for a couple of months last fall, he had a private room, with a couch-ish thing that I could sleep on. We didn't pay extra for these, the were the only options at the hospitals we were at. These are not special, private, hospitals in any way, they're just renovated and/or built within the past decade.

It seems like the profit-based healthcare system south of the border is keeping patients in shared rooms, which are nearly a generation out of date here.