The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Is this the right list to be working on vis a vis Health Care Reform?


Earlier, I linked to an article entitled How American Health Care Killed My Father by David Goldhill.

Just before he starts making suggestions on what real health reform might look like, he recaps the problem quite succinctly. Maybe the best I've ever seen it laid out. Here's what he says:


"A wasteful insurance system; distorted incentives; a bias toward treatment; moral hazard; hidden costs and a lack of transparency; curbed competition; service to the wrong customer. These are the problems at the foundation of our health-care system, resulting in a slow rot and requiring more and more money just to keep the system from collapsing."

So what do you think? Is that the right list? Regardless of HOW we do it, are those the fundamental problems that need to be solved? Let's have some discussion on that and see if we can agree to adopt it as our checklist against which all proposed solutions should be measured. It would be great to have input from all sides of the political spectrum.

No comments: