The last American President to tell people he could solve the problems with their medical care was Bill Clinton. He gave it his all. He sent Hilary to solve the problem while he and Monica went into the back office to delve into other matters. His failure on medical care was the failure of his presidency. President Barack Obama is a different kind of cat.
Obama will solve the medicare problem for Americans but please do not refer to it as Canadian style medicare. It will be a mishmash solution. It will be private care. It will be government funded care. It will be delivered by a melange of doctor owned, public owned, HMO owned hospitals. Health care will be delivered by the self-serving members of the American Medical Association. The only guarantee that anyone can give Americans is that they will continue to have the most expensive—per capita—health care system in the world.
There is nothing surprising in the stridency of the American right wing in making their last-ditched battle to forestall the juggernaut of realism with which they are faced. There will be more name calling and bigotry exhibited but the American Congress will pass Obama’s plan. It is just a process. Canada went through those days in the 1960s. Those were gentler times maybe but the cause was the same and the liberals won.
It hardly matters if Americans pay for health care through their taxes, or though individual premiums, or through their employer or through welfare. What matters is that the drug companies will continue to take their share of the pie, so will the HMOs, the private hospitals and the doctors and the nurses and the orderlies and the administrators and the cleaners and the ambulance drivers and the politicians. Health care costs eventually must become finite. The goose that lays the golden eggs of profit will eventually feel that pinch.
It might be 40 years from today, or as little as 20 that Americans will come to the realization that the socialized medicine that they thought was anathema to their republic has happened whether they like it or not.
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