The anti-reform forces lose - and predictably, they go hysterical

[fpb]

I am not a lawyer and I thank God for that, but frankly, only a lawyer (or a political obsessive) could seriously treat the "purchase" of health care in the same light as the "purchase" of broccoli. And as the concept of health care did not exist in 1776, the notion that it is unconstitutional is about as helpful as to declare that the Moon landings were unconstitutional.

To me, this has the same feel as the American unwillingness or incapacity to contemplate serious legal reform - such as the introduction of a system of Administrative Justice such as most Code Napoleon countries have - and admit that new areas of life and experience have arisen. On the one hand, the monstrous complexity and private-only nature of Obamacare makes it unlikely to succeed in the long run; on the other, if the Republicans imagine that there is a majority for what America has now in the way of healthcare, they are living on the Moon.

The worst thing from my point of view is that while an Obama victory would mean a clash of State and Church not seen in a free country since the Combes government in France, on the other hand the Church's social doctrine has no friends among the Republicans and would mean that any alliance with them to resist Obama and his cohort of Church-hating harridans such as Sebelius and Pelosi would be dangerous and deceptive. Plus, the Republicans have seen fit to choose the worst possible candidate... at this point, I can't see a positive outcome.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, we do. We understand that it is only some ten per cent of the population that is not covered. However, with us they are. And we pay less, as a percentage of GDP, to be all covered, than you do to be only 90% covered. Oh yes, that terrible, inhumane, crushing Euro-healthcare!

[jsl32.livejournal.com]

It's not even 10%, more like 5ish (about 15-20 million uninsured, mostly young and physically active). And you have smaller, more dense countries, with more ethnic homogeneity, fewer people with chronic conditions caused by diet/lifestyle and you *pay for fewer things*. So we have a very similar coverage (for most countries compared to the US I see 95-99% estimates of population coverage) and we do more stuff for our very ethnically diverse, older, more risk-pursuing, far more spread-out population.

If you compare Scandinavian-descent people in America to their relatives, you have very similar LE and outcomes, despite very different health care system structures. With Mexicans, the outcomes are better than in Mexico for Mexican-ancestry people.

I do think America could be doing a whole lot better with health care provisions, but the Obamacare thing is just more of the same stuff that adds to cost (requirements for services at a premium rate due to cronyism and regulatory capture), only with fewer mechanisms to pay for it than we already had.

I don't think the different systems in various chunks of Europe are utterly awful, but it is just as silly to think we can bolt a mechanism from a very different societal structure onto the crazyquilt that is America and get instantaneous lower costs and *more services performed by more people*.

I mean, we are all going to end up paying a bunch more for even less stuff in pretty much every nation as long as people make an idol out of health care as purchasing immortality.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for an answer that shows sanity and argues as if argument were possible. I still disagree with you, but considered to what one has to endure in this kind of environment, you are an angel out of Heaven.