Reading a NY Times story from Frank Rich titled After the Massachusetts Massacre in which Mr. Rich claims It was not a referendum on Barack Obama and  It was not a rejection of universal health care.   Umm, what rock has Mr. Rich been hiding under?

For days heading into the election, we heard over and over how Brown was campaigning as the 41st vote against health care and Coakley was campaigning as the 60th vote for health care.  I even heard Brown has a nickname “41″ because he claimed to be the 41st vote against everything Obama wanted.

I’m not sure what fantasy world Mr. Rich is living in, but it’s hard to trust the analysis and opinions of anyone who is able to make up their own view of reality so easily.

gk

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Ran across this story in the NY Times tonight suggesting that the Dems  are going to have a hard time “defending their large Congressional majorities”  in the 2010 elections.  Interesting….  That’s the first I’ve heard one that subject, and it got me to thinking about the over reaching in Clinton’s first term, which led to the Contract with America and the Republican domination of congress for the next decade.

Could health care (and the resulting loss of individual and states rights) prove to be Obama’s defining moment as it was with Hillary care?  Stay tuned….

gk

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I read a story from England tonight titled In defence of the NHS: I’m glad I didn’t break my leg in the US.  The author (Stephen Bates) recounts his experience with the British health system when he fell off a ladder and broke his leg.

He talks about how he would “without question, query or censure, be treated by the NHS at no cost to myself.”

Really?  Who paid for it Stephen?  Ahh, that’s right, the “government”, so it’s “free” to you – or is it?

Someone still had to pay for the “not one but two ambulance crews“; the “services of consultant orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, doctors, nurses, ambulance crews, physiotherapists, x-ray staff, porters and even chaplains.“; and that so far he has “spent three weeks in hospital, had four operations under general anaesthetic, daily home visits from district nurses and face weeks, if not months, of more care.“  Who is paying for that Stephen?

He talks about what his care would have cost if he had broken his leg in the US.  “$12,000 per operation; up to $3,500 for anaesthetics each time; hospital at $500 a day and ambulance $300 a trip. That’s not counting the cost of medicine. It adds up to more than $76,000” while in the same sentence saying “I can’t tell what my treatment has cost the NHS“.

He talks about paying for service when he was told there was a “nine-month wait to use the new, multimillion-pound NHS-provided MRI scanner at the hospital to investigate my aching shoulder“  and when he paid for it he “was booked in for an appointment – same scanner, same specialist, same hospital, same treatment – within the week.”

And he still doesn’t get it.  He also can’t understand why “Americans always hone in on the state of our teeth?”

gk

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