Jonathon is 100% correct.Obama is an abject failure.His compulsory health insurance is designed to bail out failed insurance companies and give more money to the pharmaceutical giants.

They will suffer our disease of over servicing,poor medical standards and people who do not take responsibility for their own health via good nutrition and exercise.

It should not be compulsory.Health insurance is optional here.Obama is just a puppet of the corporates.We all live in the institution called oligarchy.

Being an Australian who is currently living in the US (2nd time - 14 years total now), I find this discussion interesting.

I do wonder as did David Jennings what the point of race was. The fact that Obama is black has nothing to do with his current predicament. It has only been an issue when Obama wants it to be, particularly during the election where he played the reverse race card masterfully. It still surfaces from time to time as an accusation against people who oppose Obama, but largely that is baseless and gets little traction, even amongst the It has almost entirely not been an issue for anyone else, and nor should it be. That is not to pretend that there are not a good number of racists here, but they are largely irrelevant.

I do find myself agreeing with some of “Dr” (one day) Ariels comments. I have been back in the USA for the past three years and the election campaign and “Obamania” was truly an amazing spectacle to behold. He is truly a very charismatic person, who despite having accomplished very little of substance convinced the people of America his dream was worth pursuing. That he has struggled mightily to bring much of this dream to reality then, despite controlling overwhelming majorities in Congress and the Senate is hardly surprising.

What is interesting however is the media spin to protect Obama, which has weakened, but not significantly. The sycophantic adoration also has dimmed a little to finally be replaced by questions which are becoming increasingly harder for the administration to answer. You can only blame the last guy for so much. For the true believers like “Joe in the US”, the reality gap between what Obama can achieve will never be due to his lack of competence and always blamed on Bush.

And so to healthcare. There is the rhetoric that people in the US who don’t have insurance don’t receive health care, which is true in some cases, but is largely a fiction. Read carefully the words of “Joe in the US” as he would have you believe this is universally the case. Not having insurance in some cases is a serious problem, sometimes resulting in people not receiving the treatment they require. But this is true certainly in the Canadian socialized medicine system. It may also be true in Australia; however I think the Australian system by and large works. It is not perfect, but from my observations in many visits to Canada, it is certainly better than their system. I am not sure I have ever heard anyone happy with the British system. But could such a system work in the US?

The simple answer is of course yes, but simple answers are rarely adequate for complex problems. Cazza is right that getting healthcare legislation passed is a success. Clearly a strategic move to hammer it through so there could be evidence of success. While the US healthcare system needs improvement, this legislation will almost certainly not succeed in delivering meaningful or truly sustainable reform. It will change how things are done, but change is not meaningful or effective reform. I am not sure anyone understands the legislation in its entirety; I certainly make no claim to. I have heard nothing however of how for example it addresses the significant problem in the US of both frivolous lawsuits and uncapped damages, but then the trial lawyers are a powerful lobby with extensive influence on both political parties. At a fundamental level however, the most expensive basic healthcare currently in the US on a cost per service basis is within current government health programs. From what I can see, reform in this area is to pay doctors less, a solution that probably plays well in Democratic Party supporter’s hearts and minds, but is the equivalent in real terms to printing money to pay bills you can’t afford.

My final thoughts are that it is intriguing that “Joe in the US” finds it outrageous that several States Attorneys General would spend taxpayers’ dollars opposing legislation that the majority of taxpayers are opposed to and that will if effected will waste a lot of taxpayers’ dollars. Ending then with the darkness of my mind, I wonder if in some Machiavellian way Obama actually wants them to succeed. This is not the health plan he wanted as it does not contain the “public option” he clearly favors and which is more widely opposed by Americans. The “public option” would however not be subject to claim in the currently lawsuits that it is not constitutional to mandate a certain product must be purchased, whether you want it or not.

For the record, I consider myself fortunate to have basic health insurance. I also accept that it has limitations and that I cannot and will get the same healthcare as say Bill Gates (or Obama). This however is in my opinion why socialized healthcare will fail in the US as this sort of differential care will not be acceptable to those on the far left which the current administration clearly is. This point and not opposition to people having access to basic healthcare (which I believe is reasonable and largely already exists but can be improved) would in part define in my mind people to my political left.