The Belmont Club has an excellent post up about this health care bill, and points out:
The obvious difference between Roosevelt’s position in 1940 and Obama’s in 2010 was World War 2. That global conflict destroyed practically the entire productive capacity of the industrialized world with the exception of the US. It allowed for an unparalleled economic expansion and was followed by a burgeoning demographic explosion we know as the Baby Boom. Those two factors together made Roosevelt’s entitlements appear to be sustainable. Even Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society 20 years later could still count on riding those two trends. Today’s crisis is largely the result of the final exhaustion of those twin booms. Where FDR found himself at the beginning, Obama finds himself at the end.
Read the whole thing. Tomorrow we return to our regularly scheduled gun blogging, but I thought this health care vote was historic enough to warrant a day’s coverage.
The USA is the only industrialized country on the planet without Universal Healthcare.
I think the Tea Party people are loud and they are being heard because of that. I think there is an even bigger group of people who want Universal Healthcare but they don’t speak out. I’m one of the latter. I noticed today, on FOX-TV, a lot of people were appreciative that the healthcare bill passed.
If you believe the Tea Party people represent a majority, look at how many people are turning out for illegal amnesty marches. They dwarf the Tea Partiers.
Jujube, you’re glad the healthcare bill passed?
My mother, as a result of this bill, will be off of medicare and transferred to Medicaid, because Obysmal is playing a shell game. This is his way of the Medicare debt to the states, who pay some 65% of Medicaid costs. So where will that leave folks like my mother and millions of other seniors on Medicare?
This is but one of the consequences of this horrendous monstrosity. But because it sounds good, makes you feel good by using the term “universal healthcare”, you’re all for it.
You have no clue! But that will soon change! There is no free lunch, and lofty terms like “universal” will soon be exposed for what they are – a tax on the stupid!
correction and addition to above:
Medicare debt is transferred to Medicaid when Medicare is canceled and given over to the states, a nifty maneuver, because Obysmal knows that 65% of Medicaid costs are covered by the states. This bill thus cancels Medicare and then transfers it to the states to pay the costs, at at time when states are going bankrupt for lack of money.
My understanding is that a majority of the new health care bill will not kick in until 2014. If, as has been suggested almost everywhere, Obama is a one term president, then his successor will probably be blamed for everything when the real damaging parts of the bill take effect after Obama is safely out of office.
Personally, I think they do this on purpose (both the Dems and the Repubs when they can).
s
Doesn’t Greece have “universal healthcare”…they’re doin’ just great.
Countries that have national health care show a broad and growing trend is to move away from centralized government control such as Obamacare, and are introducing market-oriented features in order to stabilize their inefficient systems and reduce Government-imposed health rationing brought on by out-of-control Government costs. IOW they’re finding that Nationalized healthcare is a loss-leader and paved with waste and corruption – and their costs are rising almost everywhere, leading to budget deficits, benefit reductions and tax increases to pay for what they can’t afford. Nationalized healthcare drives UP costs just as preventative helthcare drives up costs.
To be fair, ObamaCare is a lot more market oriented than most of the European Systems. Which is to say that in the 1980s, communism in China was a lot more market oriented than communism in the Soviet Union :)
Lots of other countries have universal healthcare. Most of them are nowhere near the size of the US, nor do they have anything approaching our model with state governments vs the federal government. Just a few reasons why saying “It’s working okay for InsertFavoriteEUCountryHere” doesn’t mean it would necessarily work here.
I agree on that count. This is a very diverse, heterogeneous culture. We shouldn’t expect to implement a Swedish style welfare state, and have it work here the same way it works in Sweden.
“Most of them are nowhere near the size of the US”
Are you talking in terms of land mass or population? Here’s the map of countries with universal healthcare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Universal_Health_Care_World_Map.svg
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
Does it matter? Would you trade health care here for, say, health care in China or Russia? Both of which are bigger in one way or another?
China isn’t as far behind as we’d like to think they are.
Here’s some information from the Wikipedia article on Medical Tourism:
“China is fast emerging as a desirable destination for individuals seeking medical care in a wide range of medical specialties, including cardiology, neurology, orthopedics and others. A number of private and government hospitals in major cities have established international departments. Many leading hospitals provide treatments integrating Traditional Chinese Medicine with Western medical technology and techniques.[70] China is home to leading stem cell research and treatment hospitals that offer Westerners who want to take advantage of stem cell treatments that are still considered experimental or have yet to be approved in their home country.”
So, to answer your question, yes, I would switch with China. (Here’s a blog that will give you some idea of what medical care is like in China: http://interplast.blogs.com/ganzhou/)
Jujube, either/or. Please note I said most, not all. Russia and China do not equal most. Plus, neither of those countries has the other quality I mentioned, namely the separation of state and federal governments.
I suspect that jujube would not be quite so enamored of the medical care in China if he had to live there for a year or two…
BTDT