The British are not coming. Neither are the Canadians, nor the French, nor the....

The British are scared. They are frightened that their Conservative party-led government is going to blow up their long-established system of public health care and replace it with something like the American privatized system. This would not be acceptable to them and so they are worried and their politicians are having to repeatedly reassure them that no such plans are being made.

Remember the health care debate in this country a couple of years ago? Remember all the bombastic, jingoistic right-wing commentators who loudly proclaimed that America has the best medical care system in the world and that people from all those countries with inferior systems, like Britain and Canada, want to come here for treatment? Remember all of that? Well, like so much else spouted by the right in that debate, (Death panels, anyone?) it was a blatant, bald-faced lie. The British are NOT coming and neither are the Canadians nor the French. In fact, citizens in just about every other industrialized country in the world - all of which except for the U.S. have public-financed health care systems - are happier with their health care than Americans are. That goes for the British and the Canadians, too. Why would they want to come here? The myth that they do is all part of the "American exceptionalism" nonsense which is central to the fervent political religion of the right-wing. If they could remove the blinders from their eyes and see this country as others see it, they would be in for perhaps a fatal shock.

Unfortunately, the blinders are firmly in place and the stupidity goes on. People in large numbers in this country, unlike any of our fellow industrialized countries, continue to go without insurance and without needed medical care because they cannot afford it. That would never happen in Britain.

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