Reply To: Donald Trump
@ It is really strange to see something like healthcare become so politicised that no one appears happy with it.
There are so many cases of “ONLY IN AMERICA” per certain services or rights that the entirety of stable democratic countries have or have not. These are good things and not so good things in the eyes of others. America is full of exceptionalisms and heath care is but one big example.
The praiseworthy:
- An enormous media (literature, cinema, television) that reaches the entire world.
- Home of most of the top 10 universities in the world
- A lack of having to carry around ID with you at all times (some other English speaking countries are in between this)
- Full out freedom of speech (it is limited to some extent in every other developed country including Canada and France)
- The ability to “start-over” by moving to another state and strategically registering oneself in a clever way to escape problems in other states
- A relatively high rate of cultural integration by immigrants
- Thousands of miles of interstate hiways even to small populated areas and dozens of airport hubs with more than one national airline
- An extremely entertaining political system where a scandal or something outrageous happening every single day with various news channels helariously putting extremely diferent spins on everything.
- An enormous variety of choices for most products and services
Stuf that surprises and shocks the rest of the developed world:
- Police in small towns with tanks and SWAT teams, easy access to guns and the “War On Drugs”
- A wall (fence) between itself and a friendly country
- Millions of homeless people congregating in abandoned inner city slums
- Low tax and extreme pressure to further lower it
- Unlimited donations to parties by companies and individuals and only two politcal parties
- Climate change denialism
The thing that horrifies, saddens and confounds those in other developed countries:
- No universal healthcare
How is that possible? Even worse, there is a violent intellectual opposition against even the very very limited kind of health care that Obama was barely able to pull off. Americans pay more per capita on heath care than all other developed countries and yet millions have no coverage and even veterans given limited coverage and next to no free mental health services. As the lovingly obese Michale Moore said: “Who are we”?
