THEY BURN VILLAGES ABROAD, TOO. Ezra's post about the conservative view of how a single-payer program in health care would be like darkness just before the dawn of the free-market utopia is funny. But my first thought on reading about this view is that we are not limited to just imagination when we compare different types of health care systems. There are other countries out there, and they even have health care systems! A place called Canada (slightly north of here) has had the single-wallet plan going on for some decades. So has an island country in Europe, called the United Kingdom. Other European countries have various mixes of markets and government provision in health care. And Australia (the place with the 'roos) has a fairly market-driven experiment in health care right now. It is true that none of them are an exact match to the United States in demographics or income. But the people in those countries tend to have fairly similar illnesses and similar needs for treatment. Something could be learned from all those other countries, I think, even by American conservatives.
--J. Goodrich
