Not really

Driving to the pool at 5 a.m., Bruce Springsteen's "We take care of our own" was playing.  Having just watched a bunch of incomprehensible, feuding experts blathering on about the US Supreme Court's upholding of Obama's health care plan -- or parts of it, or changing it.......or whatever, I thought to myself, "not really, Americans don't take care of their own."  They let millions go without health care.

A civilized society is one in which its most vulnerable are cared for; America's current health system fails utterly to do that.  They let ga-zillions of citizens die and suffer for want of care.  I hate to say it again, but Canadians are different.  We do not do that.

When I said I didn't know who won and who lost, it was because both Republicans and Democrats were claiming victory.  But don't be fooled, folks.  Whenever Republicans don't like something, it's about their God money and the free-market system they slavishly worship.  Nevermind that the "free market" is what caused the downfall of middle America because Wall Street was left "free" to separate the general public from its money.  No, in the face of the evidence, Republicans still demand the private sector deliver health care.  $250 million was spent by Republicans lobbying to defeat "Obama-care".  Think where that money might have been better put to use. 

I have learned a lot by "playing dumb" and spending time with many rich, American Republicans asking why their system is so superior to ours.  They are only too happy to tell a lil' ole ignorant Canadian gal how it all works so supremely well in Uncle Sam's world.  In doing so, they reveal so much.

There are some things that cannot be left to the free market.  Health care is one of them.  Its ironic that while Americans scaremonger about Canada's system being communistic and too expensive...."It will bankrupt America," they claim (Note to Republicans: you are already bankrupt)....Canada is about the only country in the world to have weathered the global ecomonic mess relatively in tact.  And we can still go to a doctor anywhere in Canada anytime, present our health card and get care. 

Left to the sacrosanct American "free-market", doctors and drug companies will continue to reap big dollars and John Q. Public will continue to suffer and die.  Obama, of course, knows this will now be the only issue in the upcoming election because Romney has declared he will repeal the ruling "day one" if elected.  Obama also knows that once again, every Black in the US -- or at least every poor, uneducated Black, the kind without health care -- will turn out to vote for him, as they did last time, just because he is Black.  And who needs health care most?  Poor, uneducated Blacks, so he will win on this one issue and it will be a good thing.

Obama dodged a big, fat, lethal bullet because if the election were to have been fought on the economy, he would have lost.  On that file he stinks.  Don't know who sent his health care bill to the Supreme Court, but if the Republicans took that chance, that was dumb. 

In the end even they will reap rewards because no society can prosper unless its citizens are healthy and well-educated.

Incidentally, you can compare "Obama-care" to what Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas (grandfather of Keifer Sutherland, not that that matters) introduced in Canada in 1966.  It's basically a carbon copy of that formula.