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interesting post, mister jazz...objections to it:
capitalism is not one thing: there can be and are any number of institutional arrangements that operate within that general context--there is no contradiction between capitalism and universal health care. capitalism has no "natural logic" to it--there is no normative capitalist system relative to which others can be parsed. the american system follows not from any such natural logic within capitalism: it follows from political choices made by "representatives" from within the ruling oligarchy....
the french model is far more interesting and effective than is the british.
it is a mixed system: the only reason that it is not a part of the debate concerning potential models for a system less barbaric than the present one in the states--which operates according to a logic that (i'll say this again) amounts to the assumption that the lives of the children of the wealthy are worth more than the lives of the children of the poor---seems to me a function of linguistic ignorance/chauvinism (take your pick, they're the same thing from different angles). the french system delivers better health care on a more equitably basis than does the american and than does the british/canadian model. period. it is also a curiously bureaucratic system which profiles in the way the french state does--which is based on a different legal tradition than you have in the states--so if the americans were to come to their collective senses and realise that there is something ethically Wrong about a medical system that is stratified on class lines in terms of access and were to adopt the french model, it would look quite differently than it does in france.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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