NEJM -- Healing Our Sicko Health Care System

NEJM -- Healing Our Sicko Health Care System:

"To get around this catch-22, we will need populist anger but also
political foresight. Moore heads abroad to show us that a single public insurer
is the only hope. But one need not travel to Canada, the United Kingdom, or
France (much less Cuba — Moore's most dubious destination) to see the virtues of
combining universality with public cost control. Medicare, our country's most
popular and successful public insurance plan, covers everyone older than 65 and
people with disabilities — groups with great need for coverage and little
ability to obtain it privately. Yet it has controlled expenses better than the
private sector, spends little on administration, and allows patients to seek
care from nearly every doctor and hospital. For some reason, Moore ignores
Medicare. He talks about the post office, the fire department, public education
— but not the one public program that most resembles the 'free universal health
care' he extols.

"That's too bad, because the Medicare model is the not-so-secret
weapon in the campaign for affordable health care for all. Today, many advocates
of national health insurance have wisely started calling for 'Medicare for All'
rather than their old rallying cry, 'Single Payer.' But moving to a national
insurance plan overnight, whatever the label, means threatening the private
coverage on which so many Americans rely and requiring our cash-strapped
government to raise the highly visible taxes necessary to fund a system now
financed largely by the hidden drain on workers' paychecks. We may be moving
toward the day when we are ready to clear these hurdles in one leap, but we are
not there yet. "

A fairly reasoned discussion in all, but we need leadership of the RFK variety:

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? "

(Okay, wikiquote says he lifted that from GB Shaw, but, same spirit.)

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