One thing re health care that as yet you don't see the press commenting on much - and of course no one bothers to ask Obama about this, god no, can't have that - is that he's claiming reforming health care will somehow save money, whereas the reality is if you're suddenly gonna insure 40, 50 million people who weren't insured before, costs are gonna go up - the expense of health care is mostly in the fact that the technology is expensive - 50 million more people, who, since we assume they're poor are probably not particularly healthy, 50 million of these sickly bastards now suddenly with regular access to that expensive technology? - well, it's a farce to maintain that somehow costs are going to go down. No, universal health care is expensive and inefficient by its very nature and it's an outright lie by Obama to pretend that somehow that's not the case - but you sure as hell create loyal voters - just the mention of going to a two tier system in Canada gets otherwise comatose suburbanites here threatening insurrection - and there's the truth about health care reform - votes.
Which is not to suggest that the American system is beyond reproach - no health care system is - and it's not to suggest that there's no qualitative differences to the various systems - but the fact remains that medicine is expensive technology and once you make it available to people they begin to feel that access to it is their right even though they have absolutely no idea what it is they're asking for. It's as if you made the space shuttle available to a bunch of average Joes to do a few spins around the earth and then every swinging dick in the country started asking for a ride too - people just don't get it, they're very good at not getting it, and for centuries politicians have been making a good but tenuous living off that fact.
I'm not saying America shouldn't reform it's method of delivering health care - I'm saying it's a bold faced lie to pretend it's not going to be expensive.
