Healthcare as a paradigma of socialism (?)

Operation Coffee Cup was a campaign conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA) during the late 1950s and early 1960s in opposition to the Democrats' plans to extend Social Security to include health insurance for the elderly, later known as Medicare. As part of the plan, doctors' wives would organize coffee meetings in an attempt to convince acquaintances to write letters to Congress opposing the program. The operation received support from Ronald Reagan, who in 1961 produced the LP record Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine for the AMA, outlining arguments against what he called "socialized medicine". This record would be played at the coffee meetings. Michael Moore quoted Reagan's speech in the record in its 2007 documentary, Sicko.

The lobby that Reagan was supporting was basically trying to convince people that if they got free health care, their freedom would be at risk. Here's a long extract from it. Tragic and funny at the same time. But imagine a bunch of housewives sitting in a living room having tea and listening to the famous actor Ronald Reagan.



On 7 November 2009, the US house of representatives passed the bill on health care reform, 220 votes against 215 with one Republican member voting in favor. As the Washington Post says, "Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health care, but not since the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid has a chamber of Congress approved such a vast expansion of coverage. Action now shifts to the Senate, which could spend the rest of the year debating its version of the health-care overhaul".

As any person that knows that free healthcare and socialism are not closely related, I really hope for the millions of Americans living without health care coverage that the bill passes as soon as possible. One point for Europe, nowadays, nobody would ever think of depriving its citizens from healthcare, although it's not always perfect.

And if you're an American doctor, don't worry, you won't be starving.

Mr Smith in Washington

Funny,
the title of this blog came was inspired on a Frank Capra movie, where the naive Jimmy Stewart is sent to the US senate by some expert politicians sure to be able to manipulate him. I always thought that Brussels would be the correspondent of Washington for Europe: a large amount of people moving to the capital looking for jobs related to the political offices.

Well, due to my job, I was actually sent to Washington and for a couple of months I will be able to discover how it is like. Well, I ain't no politician, neither in DC nor in Brussels and probably I am not even that naive, but Mr Smith is now in Washington and the experience has been good so far.

You can wath the vull movie, right from here. Courtesy of the library of Congress of the US:



It's the city of Obama, and it's a very special time for this country. I'll try to organize my thoughts in my next plots. I'm been having lots of ideas lately, but as you know, I am "out of focus". I'm trying. Not hard.