--- On Wed, 6/17/09, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> And in an interview with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr.
> Obama expressed a willingness to compromise on his call for
> a new public insurance plan to compete with private
> insurers.
[WS:} Why do you call it Obama's sell-out. As if there were broad consensus that a public health care plan be implemented, and Mr. Obama tried to subvert that consensus.
The reality is, however, that the very structure of the US government - the political parties and their business patrons, and the staunchly pro-capitalist court system - will ensure that no national health care program, or for that matter _any_ truly national programs save the military be implemented as long as as the US political system exists in its current form - Obama or Nobama.
So read my lips - there will be no national health care plan in the US during our life time. Period. Not because Mr. Obama is a sellout, but because the US government is by design fragmented and catering mainly to the interest of local businessmen, politicos, and party bosses rather than "national interests" (whatever that might be.)
The best proof of that is that no truly national social program has ever been established in this country. Every social program that came to existence involved some form of dicking around with "public-private partnerships" i.e. pork and barrel for local interest groups, political patronage etc. Why would one think that this time it will be different? The material conditions that produced such an outcomes have not changed, have they? Does anyone seriously believe that politicians whose very existence depends on the doling out political patronage in exchange for political support would give that up and opt for a national system?
Wojtek