Health Train Track to Reform

Richard Reece, MD in his Medinnovation blog points out that the road to reform is mostly uphill.....Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.

“Each of the key players is sharply edged, high-earning physicians, the over-bedded hospital sector, employers squeezed by rapid rising benefit costs, inefficient private health insurance companies, highly profitable pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, and, finally, the public who wants more and better care but doesn’t want to pay for it.”
Sound familiar? It should, for satisfying these stakeholders block the road to health reform today. The road to universal coverage is as uphill as it has ever been.

 

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Michael L. Millenson, president of Health Quality Advisors LLC in Highland Park, IL, is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age.  In the Huffington Post today (a not unbiased publication. Millenson gives his opinion of MCain's plan for health reform

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THCB has an article authored by Maggie Mahar (Maggie Mahar is an award winning journalist and author. A frequent contributor to THCB, she is fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one of our favorite health care reads, where this piece first appeared.) She begins her analysis.........

"I have to admit I often have found the language of health care “rights” off-putting.  Yet the idea of health care as a “right” is usually pitted against the idea of health care as a “privilege.” Given that choice, I’ll circle “right” every time."

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The Wall Street Journal  sums up McCain vs. Obama,

McCain said:

I think it’s a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. … But government mandates I — I’m always a little nervous about. But it is certainly my responsibili

Obama said:

I think it should be a right for every American. … for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

The WSJ blog leaves us with this question,

Health Blog Question of the Day: What do you say? Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?