Posted on 05/12/2012 2:21:57 PM PDT by Olog-hai
As the United States Supreme Court considers whether requiring people to have health insurance is unconstitutional, Germans are bewildered as to why so many Americans appear to be against universal coverage.
They also question the continued portrayal of US President Barack Obama and his health reform backers as socialists and communists, noting that healthcare was introduced in Germany in the 19th century by Otto von Bismarck, who was definitely not a leftist, and is supported by conservative and pro-business politicians today.
"It's a solidarity principle," says Ann Marini, a spokesperson for the National Health Insurers Association. "Not every 'S' automatically means socialism."
Marini and others say that mandated coverage is something that is simply not questioned in Germany. Furthermore, even the most pro-market politicians wouldn't dare to dismantle the country's health insurance system.
The requirement that everyone buy health insurance is based on a simple concept, healthcare experts agree. Allowing healthy people to opt out of having health insurance destroys the insurance community and leaves insurers covering only the sick. …
But there are other reasons why Germans are confused about the US healthcare debate. The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. God seems to be part of many US debates, especially ones surrounding the presidential campaign. In secular European politics, the Almighty is rarely if ever invoked.
"For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn't matter which religion I look at—love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion," health insurance spokesperson Marini says. For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn't jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Pardon me, but doesn't the German liberal party refer to itself as "Social Democrats" (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD)? The SPD is a full member party of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International. It is Germany's oldest political party. It was also one of the first Marxist-influenced parties in the world. The current party platform of the SPD espouses the goal of social democracy (communism lite?), which is seen as a vision of a societal arrangement in which freedom and social justice (antithetical?) are paramount. According to the party platform, freedom, justice, and social solidarity, form the basis of social democracy. The coordinated social market economy should be strengthened, and its output should be distributed fairly. (any of this stuff starting to sound familiar?) The party sees that economic system as necessary in order to ensure the affluence of the entire population. (He must have been on drugs during this lecture...affluence is not equality of outcome) The SPD also tries to protect the society's disadvantaged with a welfare state.
Not every 'S' automatically means socialism."
But in this instance it most assuredly does. Lest we forget Karl Marx was a German who fully understood the use and misuse of language.
Allowing healthy people to opt out of having health insurance destroys the insurance community and leaves insurers covering only the sick. …
Only a German would think that this is a necessary symmetry, to which I reply what happens when healthy people start getting sick and all the money they simplemindedly put into the system has been spent on the "chronically ill" who have coincidentally been too sick to work? (Rather like our Ponzi scheme Social Security)
The other thing the Germans have working for them is their mindset. It is the only country in the world where two people will stand at an intersection at 2:00am, in a driving rain, with no visible traffic for miles, and wait for the light to change. I swear Germans do not need locks, a simple paper tag with the words "öffnen Sie sich nicht" will do, for they are constitutionally unable to color outside the lines! (that's why they are O & 2 in the World Series!)
Regards,
GtG
“The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet”.
Winston Churchill
The alliterative salute “Heil Hitler” may not have caught on as well as “Heil Shicklegruber”.
Firefighters let home burn to the ground because owners didn’t pay $75 fee
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/10/upstart-party-making-noise-in-german-politics/
You wrote:
“And Germany is not connected to a 3rd world continent which provides a never ending need for additional costs to the taxpayer.”
No, they just have Turkey, the Middle East and all of Eastern Europe moving in. Same difference. . . except for the fact that the Muslims blow up more things than most Hispanics.
Germany perfected the term “Death Panels”. They can keep their noses out of Obamacare.
They didn’t have much of a problem with death camps either...
Most of them didn’t have a problem with sending people with physical or mental handicaps up the chimney either.
Yea the Germans are such bellwether’s of freedom
Europeans willingly give up major swatches of liberty in exchange for security. Americans strike a very different bargain.
Works for us, so far.
They wanted all of those to “move in”. Part of their geopolitical strategy.
Hitler was Austrian.
And the other irony is that Stalin wasn’t Russian, he was Georgian.
This is what happens when you allow foreign-born people to be your leader.
Does the German healthcare system have tens of thousands of sneaky regulations that redistribute wealth, fundamentally transform the country and provide slush funds for political rewards?
It’s easy to have socialized medicine when you have the U.S., as the only for-profit healthcare economy in the world, funding the global R&D for pharmaceuticals and devices.
Every socialized healthcare system is subsidized by our “evil” for-profit system.
My solution to the healthcare debacle was always: levy duties on healthcare companies for the difference between what they charge U.S. consumers and foreign governmental consumers: U.S. healthcare problem solved.
“Americans historically have had some fundamental ideas about freedom that were dismissed as nonsense in much of Europe, especially the firmly regimented Germany. Americans are not so bent on a quest for utopia that they forget to consider what jolly well actually works the best.”
Very profound statement.
Austria’s Greatest Achievement - Convincing the world that Beethoven was Austrian, and Hitler was German.
I try to be profound, though sometimes I only succeed in being pompously pontificatory...
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