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It's a psychological thing: Why we don't have universal (9 March 2009)

Lloyd DeMause argues that the reason we don't have universal healthcare is because America is the nation which mostly enthusiastically "argues" that life can be all about being happy, living your dreams, while all those with univeral healthcare advocate some kind of modest, humble, "just make sure you don't stand too far apart from the crowd," approach to life. Subjugate yourself, and collectively you come to believe you now deserve to have such "parental" provisions such as universal healthcare. It's all messed up -- but it's what happens when you grow up in sin-cultures, where being happy is too readily associated with selfishness, where somebody has to be punished for all the fun.

If with Obama America changes how it imagines itself, where individual happiness becomes seen increasingly as indulgent, as in the path of public renewal, and it becomes all about doing your part for the nation, I wouldn't be surprised if America gets universal healthcare, sooner rather than later -- the current climate, notwithstanding.

Link: Questions our health debate ignores (Salon)

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