Word: nixonization
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...Sicko traces the birth of the privatized health system to Richard Nixon, who in 1971, on one of the White House tapes, noted that the scheme would work for insurance companies "because the less care they give 'em, the more money they make." Hardly anyone would deny that since then, the HMOs and pharmaceutical companies have made billions while Americans have health care below the standard of other industrialized countries, and pay more for it. (Even the flacks for HMOs acknowledge that the system needs reform.) Or that patients are routinely denied procedures they should be entitled...
...what does the departure of a man who worked in just about every Administration since the Nixon era really mean? Probably not much in the long run. The intellectual architect of the Iraq war exits the stage for now, taken out not by his massive miscalculations as a geo-strategist but by his efforts to help his girlfriend. An international bureaucracy's murky rules governing favoritism remain as shrouded as ever in mystery. And we get a lesson in how to do a lot with a little: how to dicker for a shred of honor when you have not much...
...Such an approach would match Rumsfeld's own career in government, which was dotted with long stretches of time in the private sector. He was elected to Congress in the early 1960s, did stints in the Nixon and Ford Administrations and briefly in the Reagan era. In between, he ran several large corporations and became quite wealthy. He returned to Washington in 2001 as Defense Secretary after nearly a two-decade absence. He resigned last November as public support for the war in Iraq collapsed...
...hindsight (especially if Sarkozy fulfills his own promises to take brisk and energetic action on reform), but it may be ameliorated by his foreign policy achievements. Many observers in France predict Chirac's presidency will over time enjoy the kind of foreign-policy-inspired revision that partially rehabilitated Richard Nixon's place in history...
...also become clear that there were larger forces at work against him. George Romney was a member of the party's liberal wing; he had withheld his support from Barry Goldwater in 1964 over civil rights. But by 1968 that strain of progressive Republicanism was starting to wither. Richard Nixon's triumph would be called a realignment, a no-looking-back turn to the right for the Republicans...