They might block socialized healthcare, but the idea that you could make a majority of the nation investors is absurd. It takes serious capital to truly be an investor, and lay people get into trouble when they invest, due to either out and out fraud, or the vicissitudes of the market. In the past 4-5 years, we came as close as we will ever come to average people being investors when people started treating their houses as investments first and places to live second. This did not work well.

In my family, once upon a time we got to experience cancer treatment up close and friendly under Britain's NHS. Anyone who opposes "socialized medicine" would benefit from a similar experience. Facilities were spartan, care was matter-of-fact and sometimes cold. But it worked, and it was there. When you are skating on thin ice economically, that is an absolute godsend.

National health care removes a huge burden of fear from the lives of individuals, and it changes the landscape of social interaction. It is a more important leveler than flattening incomes (which is largely about how many toys one can surround oneself with). The impact on political preferences would be huge.

The trouble with this theory is that after the 1945-1951 Labour government created the NHS (socialised health care) and lots of other welfare state elements, the Conservatives won in 1951 and Labour didn't win another general election until 1964. Then the Conservatives won again in 1969, Labour won 1974 (twice) and the Conservatives won in 1979 and were in power until 1997.

So if creating the NHS helped tip Conservative voters to Labour, it didn't prevent the Conservatives being the dominant force in British politics for the next 50 years.

What the anti-universal health care group fear is what you can learn from the British experience (and other countries): people like universal health care. Although people grumble about the NHS, and although it is always a big issue in elections, the argument is always about how best to run it (and fund it). No party that wants to win votes would ever propose ending it. That's the threat: once in place in some form, it will be popular and the Republicans will be reduced to arguing about how best to run it and pay for it.

Cato's epiphany re universal health care is not new. This was precisely Bill Kristol's reason for blocking Bill Clinton's healthcare plan. The GOP will try again, but now there is a health care crisis and everybody knows it and that will make the GOP's attempts to block it that much more difficult. Barring outright blocking of "Obamacare" what the GOP will do is to try to gum it up to make it unworkable and super expensive by including outlandish subsidies for the health insurance industry.

Sabotage by any other name.

What these fools want is their own version of health provision; something along the lines of "Bourgeois-Care," where the various factions are left to fight tooth-and-nail for what little is available in something similar to a survival-of-the-fittest/cage-match kind of thing.

Besides---what's the difference between Britain's NHS and what we've got today in the US? Just one thing---we have a lot more doctors, per capita, than Britain. But sniveling little dolts like Pethokoukis don't want you and I to know anything about that; it might make more people want "ObamaCare," and thus decrease the GOP's popularity even further....

Jeezy Creezy, most businesses would love to stop paying for health insurance for their employees. I thought Goopers liked being the "party of business" can't they even get that right?

If GM didn't have to cover health benefits for their employees and retirees, what would their bottom line look like? Then they could go on happily building ugly cars that don't work that nobody in their right mind would buy.

Universal Health care is no longer a possibility, but a pending reality. The insurance companies signed on, according to a story this week in the Times, only asking that everyone be forced into buying insurance. Unfortunately, that way insures the insurance companies will make a lot of money that could otherwise go into paying for health care.
A true single payer (read Government run) plan is what is still far off.

Be careful out there.

Country First!

The party of Ideas ! Hate, Derision and Ignorance . Oh I forgot they are the party of Jebus and this is their form of compassion

I love it. Some crappy remark in a Marxist journal, they seize on it like it is f***ing gospel. Statistics from 20 other modern-economy countries showing that universal care is cheaper AND better, that's "they're different", "do you trust those numbers?", "we get faster hip replacements", "the Japanese eat more fish".

The reason that universal care would be the death of the Republican party, is that they've now shown what a bunch of crack-headed screwups they are. If the government's running healthcare, no way in hell am I ever letting the Republicans run the government. That's the best argument they've got: "you know, we might accidentally get elected again, and think of what might happen to your healthcare when we did".

Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left.

It would also reduce the leverage the Investor Class (what a cute new name for plutocrats) has over average wage-earners. Without the fear of losing coverage, people will vote with their feet a lot more often if a company has a lousy work environment. And the competitive advantage of large existing companies have in being able to negotiate lower insurance rates will go away.

Like Iraq, how much d'ya wanna bet the GOP has no exit strategy when health care starts to go badly for them (it starts getting passed and West Virginians and Alabamans get free dental care they used to line up for once a year.)

The Republicans are unreflective and unapologetic about running the country into the ditch. They will reflexively do everything they can to prevent Obama and the Democrats from pulling it back out because that's how they roll: Party First.

Universal healthcare isn't hard, or even particularly expensive, to provide. That's why every advanced economy in the world apart from the US already has it. It spares employers the burden of its provision, making their businesses more competitive. It provides a safety net against medically-based bankruptcy, thus ensuring the financial safety and continued productivity of American workers and consumers. And, most importantly, it's the right thing to do. When an individual or family is confronted with an unforseen medical crisis, the last thing they need to be worried about is their financial survival. That's quite literally adding insult to injury, and to no discernible benefit, except for a ruthlessly profiteering Big Insurer's bottom line. That's just dumb, and Americans, all Americans, deserve better. Don't listen to what your fear-mongering, corporate shilling, Republican nay-sayers tell you.

Healthcare isn't a privilege, it's a basic right. It's not complicated to universally provide. You already have excellent hospitals, doctors and diagnostic facilities. You have all the infrastructure you need. This is simply about how the bills are paid. America already pays more per-capita than any country on earth for healthcare that doesn't cover tens of millions, taxes businesses to the point of bankruptcy, bankrupts families at their most vulnerable, won't cover those with pre-existing conditions, charges more for pharmaceuticals and procedures than any country on earth...the inequities of the American system are frankly obscene.

As an ex-pat Yank living in Australia I can't overstate how superior the system is here. Having recently endured extensive, world-class treatment for cancer (surgery, radiotherapy etc) for which I paid literally NOTHING extra, I've been able to return to work, healthy in body and bank-balance, and happily paying every single cent of my entirely reasonable income tax. I earn a bit more so I pay a bit more and do so grateful in the knowledge that those who earn less will receive precisely equivalent treatment should they find themselves confronting major illness or injury.

As America confronts its gravest economic crisis since the Depression, there has never been a greater opportunity to dramatically overhaul its ethically outdated, obscenely wasteful, grotesquely over-costly healthcare.

Carpe diem.

When McCain said he thought the way Social Security was funded is a "disgrace," I think he really meant it. The problem is, New Deal-style programs are popular and effective, and show that the core of Republican governing philosophy is a lie. The Republicans knew a decade ago that if the Democrats got health care reform passed, they were toast. That's one likely reason Bush made such a priority of prescription drug and education reform -- they were inevitable, so screw them up enough, and load them down with pro-crony goodies, as to at least mitigate the harm.

That's some swell party the conservatives have -- and they can have it. Feh.

The neocon conservatives Republicans oppose universal health because it might affect their own personal power.

The neocons demonstrate no integrity. They don't care about how we ensure good health care for all Americans.

These self-serving corrupt power hungry Republicans care about one thing only. That is that they keep their own rear ends in office. The neocons are the ones addicted to the government dole.

The neocons are undemocratic, un-American and truly disgusting.

Democrats could have had universal health care in the seventies, but they decided to play politics because Nixon was the one pushing it. His plan covered more than St. Albert Gore's plan did in 2000. So we would already be there if the party of compassion and putting people first didn't kill Nixon's plan.

That's the best argument they've got: "you know, we might accidentally get elected again, and think of what might happen to your healthcare when we did".

I've actually seen conservatives make that argument online: "If we always screw everything up, why do you want us to potentially be put in charge of healthcare?"

I think the proper term for that is "malingering."

Democrats could have had universal health care in the seventies, but they decided to play politics because Nixon was the one pushing it. His plan covered more than St. Albert Gore's plan did in 2000. So we would already be there if the party of compassion and putting people first didn't kill Nixon's plan.

Yes, the best possible strategy for Republicans in 2008 is to complain about what Democrats did forty (40) years ago. Because people like me who weren't even born then will say, "Gosh, why should I support the Democrats in trying to get national healthcare in 2008 if they blocked healthcare almost a half a century ago? Those bastards!"

Please, I urge you to write to all of your Republican representatives and beg them to use the talking point that since Democrats didn't pass universal health care in 1968, it shouldn't be passed now. Because if this election proved nothing else, it showed that people love it when aging politicians can't stop talking about what they did 40 years ago.

Many great comments here. The fact is that Universal (ideally, single-payer) Healthcare does work. Lokk at the effect on Britain on a subject like dental work. The British had the worth teeth in the advanced world as of WWII, but as soon as the NHS camed in, all the British got the dental work they'd been postponing because it was too expensive -- and most dentists gladly signed on and were swamped by the business they got. (Compare that to American Medicaid, where the only dentists who accept it -- from repute and my own experience -- are drunks, incompetents, and chiselers.)

Toby is right that the Tories stayed in power after it, but that was because they were able to do what the Eisenhower Republicans did, but the current Republican Party is incapable of -- to accept the status quo as a given and work from there. The modern Republicans are, strictly speaking, not 'conservatives' but reactionaries, people who want to change things back to a pre Roosevelt era.

And one point no one has made about 'business.'
UHC isn't just good for business because they don't have to keep paying for their workers' coverage, it also increases the health of the work force and saves them a lot of money on sick days.

Mnemosyne, I would never ask a republican to write their representatives and reference what happened in 1968 because they would look foolish. That is because LBJ was President in 1968, not Nixon.

besides, if single payer is so great, slap it on the ballot in states that allow referendums. Maybe it will get more than the 20% it got a few years ago in Oregon. I've been told we are a center left nation now, I am sure it will easily pass in every state that allows these proposals.

"besides, if single payer is so great, slap it on the ballot in states that allow referendums"

So which is it Doug ? Are Democrats bad for blocking it when Nixon proposed it, or bad for supporting it now ? It must be tough trying to keep from doing the right thing in the name of political expediency all of the time, huh ? Luckily, the Republicans can just keep pretending that Lincoln, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Nixon didn't exist, and that the Republican party was sprang forth from the saintly loins of Sir Ronnie of California.

I remember how things were back in the late 60s early 70s a little differently than Doug. Nixon pushed HMOs. The idea was to catch diseases and problems early, intervene against them when they were "cheap" to treat, prevent them from developing into "expensive" diseases, and therefore you would save money. Nice theory, and one with which I agree in general. Trouble is, we aren't always sure of the correct interventions, and even less so 40 years ago.

I don't recall Nixon pushing for any "universal" healthcare in the sense of single payor or the government financing it. He was pretty much a private enterprise person. I could be misremembering, and if anyone has other info with links, I'd be glad to stand corrected.

Doug: for universal healthcare to truly work and to save money concomitantly, you really do need it to be nationwide. Then we can finally really use the power of computers to help in healthcare. With a nationwide database, and cradle-to-grave tracking of people's health histories, you have large enough datasets to begin to predict cost-effective interventions. Also you can cut out the very expensive duplicative tests which go on now since different constituencies don't share info readily. You can cut down on medication errors. But the biggest savings would be if insurance companies are taken out of the picture. The extensive paperwork required, paying people to do nothing but be clerks keeping track of different insurance companies regs and requirements, all this could go by the board.

Of course, then people would be out of work. But if Obama can get a decent Manhattan project for energy independence and renewables use going, that can generate a lot of jobs.

Please pardon my double posting:

This is a double bind for the Repubs. If they fight health care they self identify as being against the needs of Americans who are going to be in increasingly dire straights. If they work with the Dems, they admit they can't provide what this country really needs. That's kind of simplistic, but that's how I see the overall narrative. The third way - a genuine reassessment of what Republicans really stand for in a rapidly changing world - doesn't appear likely. Another, more likely option might be to steal the Dem's basic ideas, repackage them with some subtle and key (read: highly profitable) changes, and claim ownership. Then aggressively push their relabeled product even as they refuse to support the Dem plan. I think they'll tend towards something along the lines of the last option. Otherwise, if they toe the hardcore line OR fall in with the Dems, they will indeed further marginalize themselves and their Party (such as it is) for many, many years.

From another perspective, perhaps in an Obama led paradigm shift there will be room for the voice of conservatism, even the fading radical reactionary-ism of BushCo. If one feels heard, one is far less likely to dig one's heels in. Kind of fluffy, I know, but not outside the realm of possibility.

note: when I say "them" I refer to Bush-style "movement conservatives," not Republicans or conservatives with soul or conscience, or any emergence of a more thoughtful and aware conservatism.

Reminds me of "If we keep talking about the economy, we lose". These quotes should get broad circulation.

Prup: dentistry's actually a bad example of the compromises made with the medical profession in the creation of the NHS. The dentists were allowed to retain two-tier pricing, and in some parts of the UK, particularly London and its commuter belt, it can be difficult to find dentists accepting new NHS patients.

The flipside to that is Nye Bevan's bargain with the consultants to combine private and public care, which pays off in the operating theatres and cancer wards.

Anyway, let's step back a little here. What does universal, affordable, reliable healthcare give you? It gives you the freedom to walk away from a job that sucks, and start out on your own. It gives you the knowledge that you won't have to spend an hour on the phone with an insurance drone. It takes away the fear of what might happen if fate or genetics throws you a curveball.

Conservatives hate the idea of most Americans losing that fear. They call it, in a cod-Calvinist way, 'responsibility', but what they mean is that the sick and un[der]insured aren't the elect, and thus deserve their fate. The GOP wants you to live with a hellhound on your trail.

if single payer is so great, slap it on the ballot in states that allow referendums.

Sorry, can't work sustainably on the state level. Ezra Klein explains why.

I think there's a real chance that the GOP gets behind some universal health scheme, provided that the Democrats offer it on the original 1935 SS terms -- no blacks or Mexicans.

(That was the point of excluding 'domestics' and 'agricultural workers', wasn't it?)

Just like the good old boys of the GOP: the people will like it, it will make life better for so many, but if it might benefit the Dem's politically, then, by God, they've just got to oppose it.
They're out of touch, stuck in the mud know-nothings. They can try to block progress, but the train is leaving the station & they'll be left behind. Just one more nail in the coffin of a movement reduced to being the lonely outpost of uneducated, fundamentalist, rural, older angry White men.

"After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

We've known that for centuries:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."