The CSMonitor observes that the Opening Ceremony of last night’s London Olympics seemed to be “an opening ceremony for the 99 percent:” 

It is more than a little bit presumptuous to imagine that Mr. Boyle was sending coded political messages to American voters who can’t hear the words “universal” and “health care” in the same sentence without invoking the Commerce Clause. But that doesn’t mean Boyle didn’t have a message.

He insisted that message was not political, but rather a reflection of the values that British society holds dear and emanates to the world. 

“One of the reasons we put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important the NHS is to everybody in this country,” he said at a press conference earlier in the day. ”One of the core values of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care.”

[...] Is that political? That is in the eye of the beholder. 

But it is hard to escape at least some small sense of advocacy in Boyle’s second act, particularly after a cigar-chomping elite let loose the gluttony of unchecked industry on the idyllic English countryside in the first act. This was, it seemed, an opening ceremony for the 99 percent. 

In some respects, that gave it a poignancy beyond opening ceremonies of Olympic past – Boyle actually had a cutting message, whatever you thought of it. 

If one day Obamacare does for Americans what the NHS does for the British, we’d be overjoyed to celebrate it with light-up beds and dancing nurses and doctors too. Imagine the idea of ”it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care” not being radicalized by one political party which decided, long ago, that protecting the financial interests of corporate insurance (and the overcompensated CEOs in charge of it) is their first priority.

In a truly “Christian” society, outlandish profits for insurance companies in exchange for only some being able to afford health care would be out of the question. I’m glad to see other industrialized nations chose to be humane. It gives me hope that maybe someday we will too.