I heard an interview on NPR with T.R. Reid, author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care."
Transcript
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The interview was fascinating on several levels. But I am concentrating on how the liberals in other countries have dealt with the issue of health care, as opposed to our Democrats, who keep making so many compromises that the final product is likely to be worse than what we have now..
Britain : Whenever someone tries to bring up privatizing health-care, "....the answer that the prime minister always gives is, well, obviously, the gentleman opposite wants to see us institute for-profit, American-style corporate medicine. This we will never do."
"Two countries that recently did remake their systems : Taiwan and Switzerland - In both countries, liberal political parties stepped up the pressure for change to such a level that the conservative parties were unwilling to resist.
[In Taiwan] the argument that the liberal parties took was, we're a rich country now and rich countries have a moral obligation to provide health care for everybody.
The pro-business party in power resisted that for a while. And then decided no, actually that's right. We think we do have a moral obligation as a rich country to cover everybody. So then the conservative party grabbed onto the idea and they put it into effect before the liberals could win the next elections - pretty interesting development. .... reform became so popular that the conservatives decided they wanted to take credit for it!"
What's wrong with the Baucuses and the Conrads and the Reids and the Feinsteins of the Democratic Party? It is not enough to say that they are actually right-of-center. The present-day Labour Party in Britain is actually to the right of the pre-Thatcher Tories, and yet they are able to get things their way on health care issues.
So, the question still remains - what's wrong with our "liberal" Democrats? The answer probably is - whatever is wrong with them, is no small thing!