Jacob Christensen

Wow. Just: Wow.

Wordled that one as well. But that doesn’t really capture the speech.

(click)

Charlemagne – of The Economist, not of the Franks – wonders if Barack Obama has accidentally fired a rather explosive device in the run-up to the European elections by calling for Turkish membership of the EU.

As we all remember, there were some recent incidents involving Denmark and Turkey and the Danish People’s Party tried to make to most of it. If we look at the platforms for the 2009 European Parliament election – see my links here – most parties dodge the issue one way or the other.

• No mention: Social Democrats, Conservatives, June Movement, People’s Movement.
• Strongly negative: Danish People’s Party (“Turkey should never be a member of the EU” – Islam, women’s rights and size/economic development as the main arguments)
• Mention: Liberals (“Not relevant at the moment or in the shorter term”)
• Positive: Socialists, Social Liberals (long term – when the country lives up to membership criteria)

Is Obama President yet? Is Obama President yet? Is … oh, check this link

The BBC World Service is hard to beat: It had philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah discussing the academic background of a certain Barack Obama.

Available as a podcast here, but hurry!

A young Barack Obama photographed by an aspiring photographer (who went on to become a psychologist…)

HT: BoingBoing, IssTumBul.

Give a man enough coffee and he’s capable of anything.

Malcolm Gladwell, via Brad deLong.

Apparently, Barack Obama isn’t a coffee drinker by the way. No latte-sipping revolutions here

I kid you not.

HT: Rustbelt Intellectual.

I have to admit that I haven’t followed the US debate about health insurance too closely, but I found James Wimberley’s discussion about the Obama health plan interesting:

[Obama] didn’t mention that his universal health insurance plan is basically a clone (via Edwards and Clinton) of the cunning old warhorse’s revolutionary 1884 law. This also left an existing patchwork of enterprise-based plans in place, adding a default public one. So I’ll call Obama’s scheme by its Bismarckian name: a Krankenkasse.

Just some notes about the Scandinavian systems (which are not completely identical):

• One thing they have in common is that they are basically tax-financed, although there are some complications with regard to sickness benefits.
• In Sweden, sickness benefits are administered by a state agency; in Denmark, by local councils (but under national guidelines)
• In Denmark and Sweden, there is no national health care in the strict meaning¹ – regional councils are in responsible for running primary and secondary health care. Norway is different these days and there are definitively tendencies towards centralisation of the provision of health care.
• The rule of thumb in Denmark and Sweden seems to be that a health care authority should cover 1-2 million people.
• In principle, these systems will work with private providers of health care. GPs and many specialists are private entrepreneurs in Denmark. Equally, there are a number of private clinics.
• Private insurance has played a minimal role in Denmark and Sweden, but is becoming more popular in Denmark. The question is if work-based private schemes will supplement or crowd-out public health care in the medium to long term.

1. You are of cause entitled to emergency care everywhere and there is some choice between different providers, and the systems are of cause regulated by national legislation. [↩]

That was fast. The Obama campaign has the Berlin speech out: