The correct term is “death panels”.

2) America’s health care system is the most socialized in the world.*

That is America’s health care system takes part in a vision of American exceptionalism understood by say FDR. It is the best in terms of being the most patent driven, and it is also the most socialized in this regard. It is the most socialized because it is the most trickle down economics driven, it is the best even as it is the least nationalistic/mercantilist. In terms of cost to the consumer, Germany or Canada are certainly superior, and yet it is the U.S. that puts Germany and Canada on this higher indifference curve.

On a common sense level anyone who gets drugs from Canada understands this, and given the fact that this creates its own sets of policy difficulties (perscription drug abuse crack down via Canada leading to heroin drug abuse problem via Mexico. A serious problem in Ohio, and perhaps one way to read “Looper”) It is really a serious rural problem in Ohio among many who don’t necessarily have the radio guard rails of Rush.

It actually might be true that a cost containment strategy like single payer could get the U.S. closer to the global curve on dollars per life expectancy, but it would slow the rate of socialization or outward shifting indifference curves. Single payer would be more nationalistic. (But not every nation can be vampiric in the same way…just as not every nation can be a net exporter! lol)

While somewhat irrelevant, Looper can be seen as a sort of dystopian critique of Kochism/Rush. Its location in Kansas with the attachement to guns and drugs being key. Also some play on Gold and Silver… It is an american movie I believe. (So maybe even Looper is mocking the republicans)

Keeping in mind that Republican Gov. John Kasich is serious about perscription drug abuse/smuggling/re-importation from canada and also Heroin… Folks like Rush Limbaugh are a much bigger problem than folks like Huntsman. (albeit Rush Limbaugh might have a better feel for the problem) Since folks like Rush Limbaugh were trailblazers in perscription drug fraud, and canadian smuggling.

It isn’t necessarily the case that folks don’t still believe those two propositions. It is just that the belief has a considerably different basis and feel as explained by Rush v. Huntsman v. Bloomberg. 1) Best for who? by what objective standard? 2) Protecting the U.S. from Socialized Medicine is actually the key driver in global Socialized Medicine. Neither Canadian nor German socialized medicine would work quite so well if it wasn’t socialized by American Patent. A move to single payer would actually hurt medical R+D and thus bring the cost of socialized medicine to bear upon Canada and Germany. It would mercantilize medicine or de-socialize it in the IR realm even as it socializes it on the domestic front.

Heck arguably for low budget medicine Mexico has some of the best healthcare in the world. But here the mexicans are getting the benefit of at least some of what the americans paid for.

So in some ways the middle class is paying for real trickle down economics to socialize medicine for the rest of the world. In another sense as well it is certainly the Darwinians who built that! Or cancer researchers advancing the theory of cellular evolution. In this case actually in part Huntsman’s K.

It seems to me that Rush’s K deployment is the most likely to lead to a society that looks like Looper, which of course is only a slight exageration on rural Ohio’s guns and heroin and perscription drug problem. (Complete with veterans and unemployed/vagrant tool and die factory workers who like the fetishism of gold and silver and lack long run vision.)

So undoubtably Looper is Hollywood’s exagerated commentary on the Marxist political future of Kansas.