Nothing will be repealed, at least not until after 2012. The Republicans don't have the votes in the Senate to do it, or to override an Obama veto.
Clive, the US federal/state health care assistance programs are a bit jumbled. It works like this:
1. Medicare is a federally funded program that for the most part provides health care assistance for the elderly. I'm not intimimately familiar with violence, I mean the details, but in general you are eligible in your mid 60s and you are entitled to a reasonable level of health care benefits both for preventative care and catastrophic care.
2. Medicaid is a state program partially funded by the federal government that provides some health care assistance to the poor in the US. However, it is NOTHING like the nationalized systems you guys are used to.
3. The new health care reform act set up laws in the US that are most like, as I understand, those in Germany, where every citizen is required to have health care insurance, and if they can't afford it, they can participate in a government pool by which insurers provide coverage at very discounted rates.
In the US, we have a strong lobby both from doctors primiarly and less so from businesses/insurance companies that do not want universal health care coverage like you have in Australia or even mandated insurance.
We typically aren't even capable of a rational debate of the costs/benefits of various approaches to health care since it either devolves into one side yelling that the other is socialist, and the other saying that conservatives would rather have folks dying in the streets. Neither is true.
We do have significant issues with our health care system. It may be the best in teh world for those who can afford it. But, we spend more capita on health care than I think any other country and get less benefit from that spending. We also have something like around 40 MILLION people who do not have health insurance coveage who could be wiped out by even a "minor" injury requiring $20 or $30 or $40k in health care costs.
Something needs to be done. What we got -- "Obamacare" -- was something of a bastardized compromise between teh left, who wanted a single payer system like I think you have, and the right, who only wanted to enact market reforms to the existing system.
No one is happy right now, and I think it is true that most of us worry if we can afford what was just passed.
Rational folks understand we need to fix the system and do SOMETHING, but the question is what given our current financial situation. There is no easy answer.
If we'd been smart, we would have put in place a two tiered system in the mid 90s when we could have afforded it -- single payer providing basic care to those who can't afford it with a "layer" on top of our traditional employer provided coverage.
I think that would have worked.
