This idea of universal access to basic healthcare has to be figured out as a world. No country has figured it out in part because it is driven by ideology.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It turns out Cuba has this incredible healthcare system for a very poor country.
We have a country that wants to believe it is the best in everything, but until all of us embrace the idea that health care should be a right, not a privilege, our system cannot be glibly described as, quote, 'the best in the world.'
A truly moral health care system should start out by covering all of its citizens with basic health care. It would not be seduced by its technology and fancy buildings.
We have one of the few societies, the only one I can think of right offhand, where your health care is so tied to your job, so that when an American company has to hire, they have to think about health care.
To me, regardless of who's in office, the government is strangled by business. And the government's priorities are dictated by business. I mean, why does America, even after healthcare reform, still not have free universal healthcare? I'm sure it has something to do with the insurance lobby.
We're the only western country that doesn't have a national health care ID.
What I know is that we no longer have free enterprise capitalism in health care; it's not a system any longer where people are able to innovate. It's not based on voluntary exchange. The government is directing it.
Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it.
I believe strongly that the opportunity is here for us in America to finally have a healthcare system that we can really be proud of. But it's got to be one where everybody is involved. Everybody: consumers, employers, providers, health-insurance companies, everybody.
There is just no reason why the richest nation in the world can't provide health care to all its people.