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From: Quiffie on 10 Aug 2008 12:40
"The federal government, which already provides taxpayer-funded health
insurance to the elderly, the destitute and increasingly to minors,
should extend health care coverage to everyone."



------------------------------
"READING LIST - Check Up On Health Care"

By Tomothy Noah
Sunday, August 10, 2008; B02


Sometime in the next four years, the health care system in the United
States is going to change. That's a given, because the current
patchwork is coming apart at the seams. So set aside a little time
between now and Nov. 4 to catch up on the American health care policy
debate.

The pithiest overview of the problem is "The Health Care Crisis and
What to Do About It," an essay that Paul Krugman, the Princeton
economist and New York Times columnist, wrote with his wife, Robin
Wells, for the New York Review of Books in 2006. Krugman and Wells
write in the spirit of economists seeking the most rational and cost-
effective solution (as opposed to the most politically salable one).
Their conclusion -- which I find bulletproof -- is that the federal
government, which already provides taxpayer-funded health insurance to
the elderly, the destitute and increasingly to minors, should extend
health care coverage to everyone.

Got a little time to surf the Internet? Then check out Health Care for
America Now! ( http://healthcareforamericanow.org/), a coalition of
labor unions and other liberal groups lobbying for universal health
care. Of particular interest here is the coalition's insurance
nightmares blog (http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/category/
insurance-nightmares/), which recently linked to a news story about a
Tampa Bay, Fla., teenager whose health insurer refused to pay
for . . . brain surgery. Check out the Web site for the insurer-funded
Campaign for an American Solution ( www.americanhealthsolution.org/)
to learn why brain surgery is actually a foolish indulgence. Okay, it
doesn't actually say that.

Insurance horror stories abound in Michael Moore's 2007 documentary
"Sicko." Moore is sometimes accused of exaggerating for effect, but
his Gothic tales of patients denied health insurance coverage require
(and for the most part receive) no exaggeration at all. Supplement
your DVD rental with Health Care for All ( www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91972152),
a listening tour of other countries' collectivized health care systems
from National Public Radio. It's more reliable than Moore's (though
similarly favorable).

The single best book I've encountered about the century-long evolution
of the U.S. health care mess is "Sick : The Untold Story of America's
Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price" by Jonathan
Cohn, an editor at the New Republic. A wonkier overview can be found
in " Healthcare , Guaranteed : A Simple, Secure Solution for America"
by Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health
(and brother of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel). "Best Care Anywhere: Why
VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, " by Phillip Longman of the New
America Foundation, makes the counterintuitive case that the Veterans
Administration provides an extremely successful model for socialized
medicine. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction.) " Overtreated:
Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, " by Shannon
Brownlee, another fellow at the same think tank, explains why those
patients who do have access to treatment receive it to excess, to the
detriment of their own health.

The political lessons of Hillary Rodham Clinton's failed 1994 health
care plan are documented comprehensively in " The System: The American
Way of Politics at the Breaking Point," a 684-page narrative by
journalists Haynes Johnson and David Broder. Theda Skocpol, a Harvard
sociologist, provides a more analytical and svelte (240-page) account
in "Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn Against Government. "
In general, though, the demise of Hillarycare has been over-studied in
Washington. Both the politics and the problem itself have changed a
lot since then.

chatterbox(a)slate.com

(Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080803164.html
From: Raving on 10 Aug 2008 13:36
On Aug 10, 12:40 pm, Quiffie <jismqu...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> "The federal government, which already provides taxpayer-funded health
> insurance to the elderly, the destitute and increasingly to minors,
> should extend health care coverage to everyone."

Universal healthcare: American style.

[Quoting BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7321500.stm ]

'Oregon's healthcare lottery'

A US state is running a lottery in which the prize is health
insurance.

With some 45 million Americans uninsured, how to pay for medical
treatment is a big issue in this year's presidential election.

Now officials in Oregon say they have come up with a fair way of
providing coverage for some of those who cannot afford it. ...

Many do not share her feelings, but Louanne is not alone in trying her
luck. More than 90,000 in Oregon are vying for a maximum of 10,000
places in the state's healthcare plan. ...
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