Undeterred by their savage humiliation on the topic of Stephen Hawking and the NHS, domestic opponents of health care reform continue to sling heaps of apocryphal bullshit about how socialized medicine in Britain is an abject horror. You know, babies standing in queue for vaccines while being gnawed upon by rabid squirrels and the elderly being used as livestock feed; that sort of thing.
Well it appears that Conservative Party members want precisely nothing to do with their counterparts across the pond:
With the UK economy in shambles, everyone expected the Labour Party, headed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to be defeated soundly in the next elections there. However, US Republican Party attacks on the British National Health Service as part of their campaign to discredit US health care reform are receiving wide coverage there and are causing a backlash. The NHS is so popular in the UK that virtually all politicians, including conservatives, support it, but British Conservative Party links to the US Republican party are causing it to lose popularity quickly...
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A Conservative Member of the European Parliament, appeared on US TV warning Americans against an NHS-style health care system. UK conservatives tried to distance themselves from his comments, but the damage was already done. Two UK newspapers, including one considered a conservative newspaper, ran articles revealing UK Conservative Party links to Republican NHS bashers.
[snip]
It is interesting that Britain’s health care system, which goes far beyond anything proposed by Obama, is so popular in Britain that even the slightest hint that a party wants to dismantle it will cost them an election.
The political calculus in the UK is simple. Voters hate the NHS so much that if you oppose it you get sent home.
Of course, the Republican answer to this is, "We're a much bigger country, so it couldn't work here."
And the answer to that is a primer in economies of scale. We're a much bigger country, so it's going to work better.
Did you know that the Social Security Administration spends 98 cents of every dollar on disbursements to entitled seniors? 1 cent of every dollar goes to some arcane railroad pension fund, and 1 cent goes to administrative expenses (basically, running the joint).
Compare that to 80 cents of every insurance premium dollar collected in this country going toward actual medical benefits, and it takes a truly remedial business mind to conclude that business can run health care more efficiently than government.
The Brits got it right. We can do it even better. Americans deserve no less.