A responsible proposal for universal health care
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Arnold's new proposal has its problems, but it's a monumental first step in the right direction - addressing the real incentive problems that Western European style universal health care systems have created and attempting to surmount them.
Good for him.
Good for him.
!
A sustainable option for America? Not even close. France's health care system has experienced all sorts of financial crises, most recently in 2004, which have required systemic reforms. It costs a huge and increasing sum of money to maintain, and France could not maintain anywhere near America's budgetary priorities and continue providing it. The taxes required to finance it are incredibly high.
Last I checked, France has abdicated its responsibility to be a leader in global affairs - they lack major theater warfighting capabilities, and that's how they've gotten to where they can even think of funding their current safety nets.
But are the French safety nets sustainable? Not really. They rely on extreme protectionism, ranging from farm subsidies to a stagnant employment market, that have become a cancer on French society and will inevitably have to go the way of the dodo.
If by "leadership" in international affairs you mean bullying and harassing much of the developing world, then yes, France tends not to lead.
And if by "lacking major warfighting capabilities" you mean that they don't spent at least five hundred billion dollars on their military, then yes, the French are cowards.
So, in sum, any nation that doesn't launch wars of aggression and imperialism is not a "leader." I suppose then by your standards Hitler was a great man.
As a point of order, there are some countries in this world that desperately need to be harassed.
Though I was thinking more along the lines of how France completely fucks over the developing world with their farm subsidies, and a few other things.
Why would I call them cowards? Given all the atrocities they committed in Algeria, you could call them all sorts of names, but cowards would be a bit of a stretch.
Since by definition any nation that 'launches' a war is launching a war of aggression (think about it - if you're responding defensively, you're not the one launching it, are you?), I'll set that aside, and say that America hasn't launched any wars of imperialism lately.
France, though not inclined to use it, actually has incredibly serious, highly-trained, high-technology army.
Beyond that, comparative health care studies are pretty complex. They indicate different arrangements that might be possible, but they are also based in institutional legacies, cultural expectations, and prioritizing different levels/areas/types of care. To actually shift to another country's system would be impossible, any reform would bear the imprint of its predecessor system.
But, I will make one point on financial sustainability: Don't confuse the larger financial concerns of an entire welfare system with the economics of a single component. In general, higher levels of state control and provision tend to be associated for various reasons (lower administrative costs, larger distribution of risk, etc) with lower costs.
Oh, and France is in the EU. Its not really that protectionist. Unless you're talking agriculture, which the US is guilty of as well.
To be fair, it's not a really bad size, though ours is several times larger depending on how you measure it. The devil is in that "though not inclined to use it" part. In Afghanistan, they're downright miserly - currently we have 10 times as many forces as them in-theater. I don't expect them to match us (though given that they're not bogged down in Iraq, they could), but I'd expect them to at least match the British. (The current numbers I see are something like 10,000 Americans, 5,000 Brits, 1,000 French in-theater)
They're treating a war, Afghanistan, that by any standard of shared principles is everybody's war as if it's really only America's war, and sure, if everyone else in Europe is pinching in a little, they'll pinch in a little too.
That doesn't cut it. So long as there are major and legitimate wars to be fought in the world (And I'd hope nobody here is going to be questioning Afghanistan's legitmacy, but we can get into that if you really want), a country like France that has a UNSC permanent seat should be fighting them alongside us pound for pound, or at least close to it.
Trying to equivocate US and French farm subsidies pops an old Monty Python boxing sketch into my mind, the one with Kent Cleaner System, a slightly dumber version of Rocky, boxing against "Victoria Perkins, age six".
Yes, we have farm subsidies too. Yes, that's bad. No, they don't compare to France's in any way. France is not only light-years worse on subsidies, they're the global linchpin holding agricultural subsidies together, at the forefront of fighting all reform efforts. Japan recently gave one of France's top politicians a "Hero of the Rice Farmers" award for their effort in this regard, I forget exactly who it was.