The French

Krugman:

After all, every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.

But does that really matter? In America, concepts like “less expensive” don’t stand a chance against the terrifying notion of “French.” It’s horribly sad and ridiculous that Americans are more willing to spend twice as much on healthcare simply to avoid anything that’s the slightest bit French. We’re smart!

Likewise, rednecks will voluntarily pay twice as much for gasoline just to avoid driving a small car.

In my most pessimistic hours, I can’t help to think that it’s this arrogant, hillbilly defiance that will ultimately doom America to irrelevance and failure.

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  • Dan in DE

    But German technology and efficiency are the envy of the entire world- the Americans are no exception!When will people stop and notice that even the best healthcare system in the world costs less than two thirds of ours?

  • Dan in DE

    Ok, I suppose Germany is just as euro-socialist as the rest of them in the eyes of the average american couch potato.Damn we are ignorant as a nation!

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    Maybe we should refer to France as “Freedomland”?”Hey, let’s do what they did in Freedomland!”

  • thruwithbuzz

    Why do so many Americans hate the French? If it wasn’t for the French we wouldn’t have beaten the English back in 1781.

  • kansasdem

    I actually did see a brief clip on CNN today about how well Canadian health care works. It basically concluded with the fact that taxes are high but coverage is “free”!The thing is that’s not even our goal at this point. But, we need to look at everything that evryone has tried.England’s system pretty much sucks! Spain is not so bad. France can’t be too horrible when you consider how many rich folks (like Brad and Angelina) move there to have and raise their kids.We should be able to pick and choose from what we see works in other countries and come up with the BEST!

  • http://zirgar.blogspot.com ZIRGAR

    I hate France! Hate it! No, wait. Not France–what’s the word? Oh, yeah. Ball-less Democratic waffling on health care reform. That’s what I hate. My bad!

  • brutlyhonest

    1) France warned us to stay out of Vietnam.

    2) In the raygun heyday, France refused to be complicit in much of our ridiculousness, so they became a target of derision by the real merkins.

  • http://arkytek.blogspot.com/ SillyGit

    I think it’s long past time to inform the knuckle dragging inbred morons that they are not real Americans. They are real victims of darwinian evolution and it’s time they fill their niche in the modern world as fertilizer just as their stupid ignorant forefathers did. Stupid pioneers became fertilizer. Smart Pioneers made it to Oregon and California.