Isn't It Ironic: Communists going back to socialized medicine!

After trashing their successful system of universal benefits during the "reforms" of the 1980s, China is now trying to re-establish a system of public hospitals and clinics at a cost of billions in the hope that better-off farmers will spend more instead of saving for medical emergencies. Full story is here
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6056121.ece
This development underscores the undemocratic nature of China's politics when it is compared to all the other nations that adopted government-funded health care. As the rest of them are democracies to greater or lesser extents, it is political suicide in Britain, New Zealand, France, et al, to propose taking away that public benefit. If Deng Xiaoping had had to answer to voters during the 1980s, he could never have gotten away with dismantling the social safety net.
So on the continuum between China and the most people-reponsive developed nation (Sweden? The Netherlands?) where does the U.S. fit in? From Reagan to the present (including Clinton) we have been saddled with "reforms" that have undermined the economic security and well-being of the majority, and the electoral system has been little help. Our current Prez has proposed a publicly-funded option that would serve as an opening salvo in the campaign to drive private insurance out of the system. Let's hope he uses his political capital and the bully pulpit to make it happen.