Political Irony

When even The Economist says that our health care system needs overhauling — calling it the costliest in the world but with patchy quality — and (shock!) Walmart supports reforming health care — including a mandate that requires large employers to provide health insurance — you know that America wants real health care reform.

The only question is, will Congress manage to give it to us? Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) said on Sunday that the US has “the best health care system the world has ever known” and Obama’s proposed reform is “the first step in destroying” it.

UPDATE: a blogger makes the excellent point that the US already has government-run universal healthcare, which we are already paying for! As is well known, sick person who has no money can go to any emergency room, and the hospital won’t turn them away. The hospitals are reimbursed by Medicaid (a government program!). Of course, people only go to emergency rooms when they have a big problem. How many of those big problems could have been taken care of with some simple (and less expensive) preventative medicine — if they had access to it? So the question is not whether or not we need universal health care — we are already paying for it — the question is whether we need a better system that will cost us less money.