America, the Beautiful

So I've established that the notion of policing other folks on their use of force extends beyond Iran. I want to broach a new subject.

The subject is Health Care. Launching into this: I'm so disenfranchised with Republican opposition, in the specific sense that they seem to have generated nothing more by way of objection than that the plan will be "socialist". But this misses the point. It's scare tactics. The Obama slash Congress plan is a distinctively American plan. Unlike other true socialist countries, our health care reform agenda has been discussed through and through as a gain to the economy. As an improvement of health care efficiency. As, in other words, a net improvement, to a predominantly Capitalist society. Better coverage. Less insurance company abuse. A plan to pay for it by cleaning up wastefulness. This is selling socialism with capitalist arguments. It's selling more America to Americans.

Which makes the whole recent "push" for health care reform so quintessentially, well, American. We'll extend coverage and better the health care system. No one, really, really, will have to pay for it. Sure, we may nudge up taxes here or there, and tweak this or that program. But hell, no one will really suffer, not really, and we'll have a better system to hold up as trump card against scrutiny. This is America, after all! We're not some sorry European-style government that has to recede into punitive taxes and a real bleeding of entreprenurial spirit among its populace, taking care of the sick in a pathetic charade of dependency masquerading as morality. Hell, no. We'll make health care better, and make the country better, and by God we'll make America better!

Final thought, if health care is so bad because Insurance Companies control it (and I hate them, too, like everyone else), why not force health insurance to compete? John Stossell it, my man. Go the other way. Who ever produced any statistics to the effect that REAL competition among providers wouldn't fix our current health care woes? Who is so naive to think that we have REAL competition now?

But, anyway, my point (again) is that even while proposing to socialize medicine (as Republicans charge), we're doing it in a way that shows yet again our superioirity to real socialist countries, a point that seems lost on the "Hannity" crowd. We're still America. We make, even in Obama land, decidedly Capitalist arguments for our reforms. Better Health Care, paid for. Efficient. American. Works better. Runs better. America. America the Beautiful. We're still aiming to put a man on Mars, by God. Better have a competitive health care system. Not some grey depression of real socialism.