America
WHY DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS (STILL)CANNOT AGREE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM
In order for this debate to move beyond who can score the most political points, we have to do some digging. And the first thing we will find when we start digging is that our current health care system is not just one system. It is many systems, conflicting and overlapping. And this means that—despite the clarity of words like mercy and malice—the real reason our debate about health care reform is so muddled is that we are actually debating the reform of several systems cobbled together over time and based on very different philosophies.
Reforming our health care system is like trying to fix a home where each room not only has a different architectural style but is built on a different foundation and has its own HVAC system. It is the kind of renovation that would make most contractors throw up their hands and walk away. But since we are all living in this house, we had better figure out how to renovate it. Read More…
The New York Times
THE SPECIALISTS’ STRANGLEHOLD ON MEDICINE
Republicans are trying to cut health care spending. But hacking away at Medicaid, weakening coverage requirements and replacing Obamacare’s subsidies with a convoluted tax credit will not deal with the real crisis in American health care.
The Affordable Care Act was misnamed; it should have been called the Access to Unaffordable Care Act. In 2015 health care spending reached $3.2 trillion — $10,000 for every man, woman and child in America. While our health care system is the most expensive in the world by far, on many measures of performance it ranked last out of 11 developed countries, according to a 2014 Commonwealth Fund Report. Read more of this Op-Ed…