Thursday, October 08, 2009

Steve Lovell on the Health Care Debate

I asked British philosopher and fellow Lewis scholar Steve Lovell what he thought of the controversy surrounding health care in America.

Haven't paid any attention to the health care debate in the US. To us in the UK with the NHS the right-wing reaction to Obama's plans seems a little extreme. You have to be seriously right wing over here to say much against the NHS. Obviously everyone wants it to be improved, but no-one wants to scrap it and start over.

It seems as if the people in other countries who have "socialized" medicine never want their systems uprooted and privatized, in spite of all these complaints about death panels and long waits for treatment.

The arguments against Obama's plans can be used against Medicare. Come to think of it, I remember when Medicare was proposed, and they were used against Medicare.

2 comments:

Blue Devil Knight said...

Great point. It's like public education in the US. Yes, it sort of sucks, but nobody but the most nutty libertarian wants to kill public education. The right goes for education reform, not abolition.

Unless you think education is more important than physical health, it seems strange we have one and not the other.

Upshot: Poor people in the US may be dying due to lack of health insurance, but at least they know when the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Blue Devil Knight said...

I just had a new thought along the lines of this post.

There are these silly arguments that the public option would kill private health care. Why didn't that happen with education? We still have private education: it is better and only available for a select few, but at least the average (not wealthy) person can get some education for their kid.

The parallels are quite nice between health care and education, has anyone explored it in any depth in the major media outlets?