I've mentioned previously that my main regret about leaving France is losing the excellent French health care system. Here in the states, we have NO health care - no insurance, no ability to get affordable insurance, and if I get injured in the shop, I may as well put a bullet in my head because that would pretty much be the end of things, with no means of paying for expensive hospital treatment. This is why it continues to surprise me that there is actually such a controversy over the possibility of national health care here, even though admittedly a lot of the resistance is based on outright lies and propaganda by the insurance and drug industries, not to mention fanatical right wing opposition who simply don't want to see Obama succeed on
anything, no matter how much good it might do the country. The NY Times had an excellent article on this subject today:
Get Real on Health Care Some snips below...
I don’t think there’s much to debate when France spends 11 percent of its gross domestic product on health care and insures everyone and the United States spends 16.5 percent of G.D.P. and leaves 20 percent of adults under 65 uninsured. The numbers don’t lie: The U.S. system is wasteful and unjust.
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So I’m convinced there’s no real argument. As President Obama put it last week, “We spend one and half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t healthier for it.” Why would the United States cling to the dubious distinction of being the only wealthy nation that does not afford basic health insurance to all?
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2 comments:
Great article. This should definitely be posted in the appropriate thread on the PC boards.
Seriously, it seems that some people in the U.S. are so far removed from reality that they are just setting up straw man armies and having them charge each other.
I do boggle over some of the freak-out fears that are getting trotted out, especially the death panel nonsense. You know, like the government death panels that exist in all those OTHER countries that have given in to the demons of socialized medicine, like England, France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Finland, etc.
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