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Right-leaning Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index appears to like universal healthcare

Remember how many big-name Republicans went after Obamacare, saying it was trampling on our freedoms and the first step toward socialism?

Even former Senator and current president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation - Jim DeMint - referred to Obamacare as "a cancer" and said that it "is fundamentally inconsistent with liberty."

I only mention DeMint specifically because of the recently released 2013 Heritage Economic Freedom Index, where the conservative-leaning group ranks countries based on their level of freedom from an economic standpoint.

Number 10 on the list of most free countries, according to the Heritage Foundation, is the United States. This is both surprising and unsurprising. It's surprising, given the fact that the liberty-trampling Obamacare (according to many conservatives) looks like it's here to stay. However, many of these same conservatives who decry Obamacare for that alleged reason also lay claim that the U.S. is the freest, greatest country in the history of the world or something to that effect. However great the contradiction, the U.S. snuck into the top ten in this list.

Who else made the top ten? I'm glad I asked. Counting down from the number 9 to number 1 spots, the nine other countries making the top ten of the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index are: Denmark, Mauritius, Chile, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

How many of these countries have some type of universal healthcare? Oh, all of them. In fact, the majority of these countries, even post-Obamacare, have a more expansive healthcare system than the United States. So, how is it that Obamacare is such an intrusion on our liberties, yet we're still ranked 10th according to this conservative group on our level of economic freedom, and the nine countries in front of us in that department have just as expansive if not a more expansive healthcare system than we do? So, yeah, how does that work exactly?

It would have been one thing for the Heritage Foundation to have ranked the United States down a ways on their list of economic freedom and countries whom possess universal healthcare systems were ranked down with them. This would have shown consistency between their talking points and what they actually believe. However, after hearing their extremely critical words of Obamacare and reading the right-wing Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index, I'm hard-pressed to find that consistency and with that, am finding it difficult to make any sense of the matter. The only possible reason I can come up with is that these conservatives truly do believe, even while possessing some semblance of universal healthcare, the likes of: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Denmark, and the United States are the freest countries in the world, but they also know how to rile their base by bashing Obamacare and presenting it as the monster that it isn't, as the right-leaning Heritage Foundation's freedom index showcases.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/11/1429241/conservative-think-tank-ranks-government-run-health-care-as-compatible-with-freedom/

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