health-care wait times guarantee

One of Nicolas Sarkozy’s (six or eight thousand) campaign promises was a “droit au logement opposable,” a… this is a bit hard to translate… an exchangeable or tradeable right to housing. Basically — and this is kind of important, given what’s happened — Sarkozy’s point was that the right to housing, for any person regardless of means, mustn’t be an abstract ideal, or a pious wish. It must be a right that could be exchanged against a demand: people whose applications for social housing must be able to bang their fist on the table and demand that the state cut through red tape and furnish humane housing. Simple social justice, you see. Nicolas Sarkozy, tribune of the people.