Last week,
I noted that the GOP's defense hawks have taken to accusing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats of exploiting America's health care crisis to further their long-term "plot" to curtail defense spending -- and, by extension, our nation's capacity for military interventions abroad. The implied beneficiary of this "unilateral surrender"? Why, the Chinese, of course, who'd thereby be left free to conquer the developing world in their unending quest to secure raw materials.
But a funny thing happened on the way to China's presumed domination of the world's natural resources: It ran into the same core problem that America suffers -- namely, skyrocketing health care costs combined with too many citizens lacking access. Indeed, it's fair to say that health care reform stands at the center of both nations' efforts to address the "rebalancing" challenge revealed by last year's global financial panic. And just like America needs more help from China in managing the global security environment, our health care system could logically benefit from China's ambitious quest to expand primary health care coverage to its population. ...