The US is not France...

Megan McArdle:

"If we get national healthcare, we will not get anything like the neat little systems proposed by academics who can assume away many of the political problems. I am aware that proponents would rejoinder, that yes, they know it won't be perfect, but . . . But I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good. A national healthcare system in the United States will not merely be something sadly less than ideal--it will be nothing like most of the internally coherent proposals. It will be something jury rigged out of Medicare, S-Chip and insurance mandates, ugly and very expensive.

No, we won't be like France. In this narrow instance, it might be better if we were. Instead, we'll be like America, where public institutions are costly, inefficient and generally not very well respected."