American Health Care Situation Is World's Boogeyman

Tammy kindly sent me this link to a National Public Radio broadcast with T. R. Reid, the author of "Healing America". In it, Reid describes what he learned in the 3 years he traveled around the world, comparing health care in various First World countries.

The most amusing revelation, I thought, was that many countries (perhaps including my own) use the current American setup as a scare tactic for just how bad things could get if some new proposed change were made to the current system. Nobody wants to be as screwed up as the States are... except a sizable contingent of Americans, of course, who'll even bring their guns out in defense of the status quo. For any other country, you'd think that sort of lowly position in the eyes of the rest of the world would be really hard on the ego, but I suppose it's nothing they can't overcome with really loud chants of "U! S! A!"

I also learned that Lyndon Johnson borrowed both the name and some of the structure of our Canadian health care system (implemented province-by-province) when he created Medicare. I'd always assumed that the names being the same was a coincidence, as it seems like an obvious term to have coined. But isn't it funny that the system most loved by the American public (especially its seniors) is based on the dreaded "socialized medicine" that conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Fatso Limbaugh have been warning Americans against for fifty years or more?