It is a self imposed deadline, but I made a promise to myself to write a post about something besides the damn war before the Potter book takes me away from this fun. Let's rag on the right about health care, since Sicko has their knickers in a twist.
The National Review wrote last month that Republicans should
propose market reforms for health insurance. They do not say what the magical reforms are, aside from eliminating some unspecified regulations that raise the price of health care. But magically, these reforms will lower the price of health care so people can afford their own policies, fixing the problem of people being afraid to switch jobs because they will lose health insurance. But what mechanism would cause employers to use the money they save to raise wages so people can afford insurance, rather than giving billions in bonuses to their top executives? The editorialists don't even recognize a good thing for their pro billionaire agenda: they should be for policies that make people afraid to switch jobs, because it helps keep wages down. Finally, they say that such a policy would reduce the momentum for socialized medicine. Oh, don't get those socialist cooties on me.
Jay Nordlinger "took one for the team" and went to see Sicko, showing the usual right wing psychosis about being exposed to any ideas outside the neo fascist canon. He
foamed at the mouth about the Cuba part of the movie (what, Sicko is about the American health care system? You would think it was about Cuba from Nordlinger.) He points out that the Cuban medical system has few resources. He is probably exaggerating the lack of resources, but if he is not, all the more credit to the Cuban system to get results approaching those of the U.S.
Nordlinger mentions Hilda Molina, who, according to Wikipedia, objected when told her clinic should treat foreigners paying in dollars, when formerly the clinic had treated only Cubans. I wonder what Nordlinger would think about an American doctor who resigned when ordered to treat paying foreigners instead of Americans. Molina has also been denied a visa by the Cuban government to visit family in Argentina. I'll bet that Nordlinger was really upset about that on his last, U.S. government approved trip to Cuba.
The true believers' world view is threated by the fact that their precious market system, spending twice as much as comparable market economies, shows comparitively worse results, and spending twenty times as much as impoverished Cuba, produces essentially similar results. They shot down reforms intended to preserve the market system in 1994, but the results have been disastrous. The high costs and 15% of the population uninsured may lead the people to get fed up enough to demand our government to implement Medicare for all.
