AlterNet: Talk to Me Like I'm 4: Why Our Health Care System Failed Us and How We Can Fix It

[marmar]

Talk to Me Like I'm 4: Why Our Health Care System Failed Us and How We Can Fix It

By J. Goodrich, AlterNet. Posted February 12, 2009.

The United States' health care system is like a patchwork quilt that we keep trying to mend when, really, we need a new one.



If you could meet a genie in a bottle, free it and receive three wishes about the American health care system as your reward, what would those wishes be?

For most experts, they would be high quality, low costs and universal access: The best medical care possible with the least amount of money to the largest number of people. That, indeed, would be lovely.

Alas, genies from bottles have so far refused to help us reach all those important goals at the same time. Instead, we are stuck with all-too-human plans for fixing the ailing U.S. health care delivery system.

Those plans can be summarized as mostly pro-market or mostly pro-government: Either encourage more competition in the health care markets or supervise and regulate those markets more stringently. It helps to think of such plans as falling somewhere along a straight line where one end-point denotes perfectly unregulated ("free") markets with an almost Wild West flavor, and the other end-point denotes a system of government-owned-and-controlled ("socialized") health care provision. Where should the U.S. system place itself on such a line?

The Obama administration has a chance to make its own recommendations on that placement, although recent rumors hint at nothing much happening during 2009. Obama's campaign Web site tells us, though, that his administration has both pro-market and pro-government plans for fixing the health care system. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/126138/talk_to_me_like_i%27m_4%3A_why_our_health_care_system_failed_us_and_how_we_can_fix_it/