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Paris General
Until recently, when the political left wanted to promote universal health care, it would point to Canada as the example the U.S. should follow. Now the left is touting France. In a recent editorial, the New Republic stated "the French, whose system the World Health Organization recently declared the planet's best, have more hospital beds [than Americans]. They get more doctor visits, too, perhaps because their access to physicians is nearly unfettered--a privilege even most middle-class Americans surrendered with the spread of managed care." Apparently our great neighbor to the North has fallen out of favor with the socialized-medicine crowd.

Changing poster boys is nothing new for the left. In their 1979 book Free to Choose, Milton and Rose Friedman noted the increasing calamity that was the British health system: "The British National Health Service has now been in operation more than three decades, and the results are pretty conclusive. That, no doubt, is why Canada has been replacing Britain as the example pointed to." In recent years, thanks in large part to conservative and libertarian scholars, Canada's single-payer system has also been exposed as a mess. From hospital shortages to long wait times for surgery, the problem has gotten so bad that, as the New York Times recently reported, private clinics are now springing up at the rate of one a week in Canada -- even though they may be illegal.

Since Canada no longer "proves" that government-run health care is better than private care, the American left needs a new nation. And why not France? After all, if you can just overlook the trifling problems like the Muslim riots, nearly 10 percent unemployment, and college students protesting a new law that would allow employers to fire employees, France should serve as a great example....