A quick digest of my favorite comments so far on the Health Care Reform bill that passed into law on Sunday. These aren’t so much sweeping explanations of the ‘big picture’– more just short posts that argue a interesting and specific point well, or in a manner that I find engaging:
- Josh Marshall discusses the weird importance of ‘standing on principle‘ in American politics, as opposed to merely being on the popular side of an issue.
- David Frum’s much-discussed lamentation of the Republican conundrum.
- Matt Yglesias sorts through the mixed Napoleon metaphors aimed against Obama here and here and here.
- Yglesias, one more time, making a simple but long-overdue point about how to read the polls.
(Image: the current header graphic of the official GOP site, which for some hilarious reason shows the Speaker of the House engulfed in hellfire).
I assume it’s single-payer, commie socialist healthcare in the Czech Republic. Am I right? And is it just as awful as we’ve been told here in the US? You have to wait 8 months to see a doctor and maybe amputate your own leg if you get gangrene, which you get a lot because there is no preventative care?
So were they right about all that?
You got it!
Actually, my friend moved here in the mid 90s (when Prague was still the Wild West) and he had to take a visiting friend for an emergency dental procedue. He claims there was a packed waiting room full of moaning people, half of whom literally had ice packs fastened to their jaws with the classic checkered red and white picnic-table-style scarfs. And, the friend wound up being held down by two burly nurses while his tooth was removed sans novocaine.
So, I think the moral of the story is that there’s a sublime balance to be struck between socialist and modern (aka capitalist) health care systems.
Thanks for an interesting post. I’d made a pact with myself not to read any of the rants about the health care bill but this one had more light than heat.