Laughingstocks would be too strong a word. (Unlike that whole Gore/Bush hanging chads thing; you were laughingstocks then.) Really it's more like a tragedy than a comedy: the Aristotelian flaw of self-interest leading unexpectedly but inexorably to a catastrophic outcome. Even those of us who are pretty sure that you'd be better off with state healthcare (or, for different examples, without pork-barrel politics or without the Second Amendment) can't easily see a politically-viable way of actually getting to those beneficial outcomes starting from the corner you're now painted-into.

In a way (and this is probably a lefty's rather than a general view), the example of the US is like a shepherd moon steering us away from "capitalism without compassion" just as the Soviet Union steered us by example away from "socialism without opportunity".

Peter