What if?

[dcsmart]

This is an interesting article, especially about the health care system in france and japan and other countries. Check it out.

What if this is 1935 and Congress is getting ready to vote on the Social Security Act?

As political progressives, union activists or whatever, do you support the bill or oppose it?

No-brainer, right?

So what if I told you that by supporting the 1935 Social Security Act you would be selling out the working class and capitulating to right-wing special interests who wrote half the bill?

Didn't see that one coming, didja?

To get Social Security passed, progressives had to agree to exclude nearly one-half of the working class, including two-thirds of all African Americans and more than one-half of all women.

Yep, that's the deal you would have had to make in 1935 to pass what we know now is one of the most progressive and successful governmental programs of all time. But in 1935, it didn't look that way when progressives had to accept the deal racist, reactionary Southern Democrats laid down in exchange for their votes.


We still have to figure that one out. But one thing we can't afford to do is make single-payer a dogma. Such rigidity in strategy ties our hands and limits our options. Looking at the world, we see that more nations accomplished the goal of health care for all through a multi-payer system, not a single-payer one. Only Canada, Taiwan and South Korea have chosen to go single-payer.

France is considered to have the world's best health care system while Japan has the longest healthy life expectancy. Single-payer systems? Hardly. French citizens are covered by 14 private insurance companies. The Japanese have about 3,500 private health insurance plans. These multi-payer systems succeed because private insurers there are not allowed to make a profit selling health insurance.
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Full article
http://www.peoplesworld.org/what-if/

[treestar]

1. Their answer to that is that NAFTA and the Patriot Act are still not "fixed."

I don't think they know what NAFTA is.

But yeah, this is a start, or a continuation along the path that started with Medicare.

[Cha]

3. So what? That doesn't negate what did happen.

They need to start living in reality and quit listening to hysterics of ms jane hamsher.

[Cha]

2. I'm finding out more interesting history

on the beginnnings of other Socialist Programs since the Senate Health Bill is being passed than I ever imagined.

Thank you, dcsmart.