Ramesh, your friend’s analysis is excellent (although I am inclined to believe that Obamacare “repeal” in and of itself is not politically likely unless it is accompanied by some sort of constructive alternative). I do think, however, that he may be missing one important point.
He writes:
In Britain the introduction of the NHS was passionately supported by both parties. Tory opposition to the legislation accepted the principle of medical care free at the point of consumption and concentrated instead on secondary questions. It could hardly have done otherwise since Churchill’s wartime coalition government had developed its own plans for a single-payer system of universal health insurance—along with other statist social welfare measures.
That’s true (though not all Tories were that “passionate” a class of supporters), but only so so far as it goes. When Churchill promised universal health care, he did so with the caveat that it should not be introduced (at least completely) until it could be afforded. In the Britain of 1945 it was clear to many that it could not be. The country was bust. As a result, it appears that, so far as the majority of the public was concerned, free health care was eagerly anticipated but not a top priority. The incoming Labour government led by Clement Attlee (I wrote a piece in NR comparing Attlee with Obama earlier this year) took a rather more cavalier attitude to the nations’s finances and pressed on with the establishment of the NHS. Politically, Attlee was right to do so. The NHS proved immensely popular from the get-go, and Britain’s politics were given a mighty shove to the left. Permanently.