Reloading the Sound Bites on Universal Health Care

Waking up this morning to a NPR story on the gathering by "Tea Party" supporters in Searchlight Nevada got me wondering, again, who are these folks, threatened by health care reform, calling this law and Obama socialist?

For starters, they are in the minority. According to a recent Gallop Poll Americans approved the health care reform bill by 9%--49% approved health care reform while 40% disapproved.

This group may be confused about which countries are socialist and what socialism is. Here is a map of the countries around the world with universal health care:



This map appears on the Web site Freebase.com.

This writer is no expert on geography, but I don't recall US allies, such as most of Europe, Japan, and Australia, being predominantly socialist. If, like this writer, you too are geographically challenged, a list of countries with universal health care appears at this site, truecostblog.com. Countries like Japan, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Israel, all have universal health care. Many of them have had it for decades, with no sign of financial or social ruin.

In fact, it appears from the map, that by endorsing universal health care, the US leaves the ranks of countries such as Africa and Communist China, who like the US, do not have universal health care, and joins the ranks of most of our historic allies in Europe.

Lastly, for those folks aligning themselves with the "Tea Party" this writer is curious if they recently looked at their grade school history books? Wasn't the Tea Party, a reaction of US colonists to paying taxes to England without representation in the colonies? This might be similar to a situation where US politicians, like those in England during the time of US colonization, were more responsive to the lobbying efforts of a wealthy few, corporations, and an aristocratic class.

If the Gallop Poll is accurate, and more of us are interested in health care reform, and the US is still a democracy, then the real Tea Party occurred when health care reform was delivered to the hands of average taxpayers from those of wealthy corporations and lobbyists, by a president, elected by the majority of the US voters.

For a review of the historical facts of the Boston Tea Party refer to this brief account in Wikipidia. As for the "Tea Party's" references to Woodstock at the gathering in Search;ight... I'm truly at a loss for words.