When it comes to our broken health care system, I blame you, well, I blame us. In short, only a nationalized health care system will work. Until we demand it, our system will remain broken. Shame on Republicans for scaring people! Rhetorically, this happens in two ways. First, there's the specter of Canada/UK, etc. I've used both health systems. They're not bad. If there are drawbacks, it is a function of the amount money put into their systems not the system itself. You could change those systems by, for example, doubling, say, the UK's per capita expenditure and still have significantly less than our current expenditure on health care. Second, there's the specter of government. The line generally goes, "you don't want the government making medical choices for you, do you?" No one asks the question, "do you want for-profit companies, who make more money by denying care than providing it, making your medical choices for you?" Still, neither presidential candidate's health care plan goes far enough -- really, it was Clinton who had the best plan. Obama's plan is only slightly better than McCain's.
"The McCain plan is a recipe for shrinking coverage. The individual insurance market is notoriously treacherous and the amount of the tax credits is nowhere near enough to purchase even a high deductible policy. Furthermore, the tax-exempt health savings accounts would not be of much help to poor or even middle-class people since they aren't much motivated by tax breaks and don't have discretionary money to put aside in the health savings accounts anyway."From: Reforming Our Health System: Why Neither Candidate Has the Answer, a lecture given at Princeton University by Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. In her lecture, Angell explores why -- despite higher and spiraling per-capita costs -- the American system provides fewer basic health services than many other advanced nations. She proposes fundamental changes that would make universal health care at sustainable cost a real possibility. It's worth a listen.
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