Ezra Klein: Republicans for single-payer health care

[babylonsister]

:shrug:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/republicans_for_single-payer_h.html


Republicans for single-payer health care
Ezra Klein


Republicans spent the first day of the Senate's health-care reform debate extolling the virtues of Medicare and swearing to protect it from even the lightest of legislative love taps. Today, however, a bunch of them have taken to the floor to extol Canada's single-payer system, albeit obliquely. David Vitter, impressed by Canada's low drug prices, accidentally made a strong case for single-payer earlier today. And now Olympia Snowe, who opposes a strong public option and Medicare buy-in, is making much the same argument.

It's one thing to be a single-payer supporter, or a single-payer opponent. But I can't figure out being a supporter of free-riding on other countries' single-payer systems, while simultaneously opposing the establishment of any such system in the United States. This stuff might be good and it might be bad, but it's odd to say that it's really good in Canada, and only in Canada, so Americans should head over there to use it.