Dah, if it wasn't, it would have been done by now.  All countries are having problems groping with the 3 related issues of costs, quality and access. Fix one or two, and the other becomes uncontrollable and/or unacceptable.  The Canadians have their way, and their system has innovation and timely access problems. The British have their way, and their system has fairness and quality problems.  The US has all these problems so we certainly need to reform ours!

Let me use this thread to vent a bit about personal responsibility.  Conservatives, whether they be far right wing repubs or middle of the road conservatives keep harping on personal responsibility claiming America's greatness comes from this spirit.  Personal responsibility can be a smoke scream for personal advantage and personal prejudice.  When people have systematic advantage, it is quite easy to solidify this advantage by claiming that any changes from it will be against personal responsibility and un-American.  Sound familiar? What is left unsaid is the system advantage is also to be left untouched which makes it easy for those with advantage to hide behind it.

I may go see him.  Short diary about my wife and I and this PA primary.

I have been invited to attend a town hall type meeting tomorrow night in my hometown of Lancaster, PA with Hillary Clinton.  I have also been been told I can ask a question on any topic to Hillary which she will answer.  

Oil prices spiked in the 1970s, and inflation and hard times followed.  Now oils prices are skyrocketing, and inflation and/or recession seem well on their way to making a return.  Do run-away prices on a vital commodity cause recessions.  If so, who is responsible for this one??

Interesting materials and discussions going on over at the HealthAffairs blog related to healthcare and economics!  We discuss around here the uninsured and the tragic life consequences that can happen to the uninsured in this country, but the American Healthcare system may be soon responsible for economic hardships for us all if not already!  

In the fog of political campaigns, sometimes logic is lost. It can often be regained, however, by stepping back from the political and just asking what the real/true objective(s) may be.  If the main objective is universal healthcare coverage with everyone in the pool to spread costs over the largest risk pool, then that is the objective!

Ever heard of FDA preemption??  Do you trust that every drug and every device approved by the FDA is safe??  Do you think the FDA review process is above board and always fair and adequate? If you are injured by such drugs/devices which were FDA approved, do you think you should have any legal recourse.  Well the Bush Administration and now its/the Supreme Court thinks you should not.  You see, government healthcare actions are not all good, as it depends on that same old issue of who is in power and what are their views about government purposes!

Egalitarianism is the moral doctrine that equality ought to prevail among some group along some dimension.  When we on the political left talk about single payer healthcare, we really need to define what that means because  there are many people who are very fearful of what kind of a system single payer implies.  Many in America want privileges that power and money can bring and are not willing to be denied or to wait in long queues for care they can afford to pay for themselves.  Even countries that have a single payer option vary on what that means and almost all are having problems dealing with the resultant consequences.  I wonder what the majority of folks on this site actually mean when they think about single payer healthcare system.  

We get a lot of diaries here about how bad our healthcare system is and where the faults might lie. We also get suggestions for progressive solutions, namely single payer, but the reality of achieving such a healthcare system in America seems still a ways off to put it mildly!  We now at best have to settle for possible compromises with the existing private insurance run system which most of us are very suspicious about.

Well call this diary a trip to a far off land (or so it would seem but it is not that far away) that already is doing single payer, but wants, no needs to improve even that system that we seem to desire here.  I thought it might be nice to read about what British Columbia is planning for improvements in their public single payer system because maybe we can learn from this, or at least envy the social harmony and responsibility they seemed to have arrived at.

To my mind, there are 3 broad general health reform plans floating around.

--Single payer like the Canadian system and supported by the far left.

--An attempt to get everyone covered under the current private insurance system but probably also with insurance reforms such as community ratings for all premiums and no prior condition exclusions.  This option would have subsidies for the poor and possibly be mandated that everyone get in!

This third idea above is what is getting the most play with Massachusetts and California, as well as the 3 (now 2) Democractic candidates.  Of course the Repubs want the Consumer Directed healthcare idea and the far left still wants single payer!  Well this third track has been dealt a serious blow this week in CA.  See below!

There was some information published in a story in Business Week (of all places) that really helped me solidify the need for strong public health influence in any health reformed system, such reform of some type we all agree is badly needed. However just giving everyone access to today's system with its perverse, caveat emptor incentives may do more harm than good.  

I believe there is a major difference between public health thinking folks and private sector business thinking type folks in healthcare. Public health does not believe that those with less info or less I.Q., or less funds should be hurt by the system because of their disadvantages.  Indeed, public health advocates believe it is within the regulatory sphere of society that nobody is hurt by such caveat emptor actions in healthcare.  I would have also thought that the provider profession (do not harm) would see this as a basic tenant, but many evidentially may not or how did we get to where we are today?

Are medical experiments allowed here on Kos. I have a cute mind-body experiment that I would like to try on folks, and then see the results through a poll after you try this.  BTW, I wonder if progressive minds perform better or worse on this than others, especially conservative minds??

Universal access to healthcare in this country has been hampered partly because provider organizations have been against if for many years.  Now at least one Provider Org,
The American College of Physicians, is now singing a different tune for some reason.  If universal access to care is going to ever come about, gettting the buy in of providers for system reforms is important.

We starve-look
At one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation
Of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes

I have seen this movie and play before, but not for a long time.  When it was over, I felt like a ton of bricks had hit me, and I was sad.  It brought back so many personal feelings that I have not really felt or thought about in a while, but when they did come back against the current background of the Iraq war, well it just made me feel empty and sad.  Are we (America) just traveling in a circle learning nothing, or is the social circumstance so different without a forced draft that even if we have learned, the majority does not care! What does that say about us??

TEXT OF SPEECH

VIDEO LINK

I read an interesting piece today which has my head spinning.  I hardly know where to start, except that I found out I am not so bad off financially compared to most others!!  Gee maybe I should be a Republican??

I showed my wife this article, but I am not sure if that was wise??  Anyway, then I started thinking about what income and assets it takes to live even moderately well in America, nevermind retire.  With Repubs in power over the bulk of the last 20 years, you would think most Americans were wealthy because Repub policies cater to the wealthy. I mean why would America vote for conservative repubs if most Americans were fairly poor?

We read a lot around here that if we could only give everyone access to all the healthcare they wanted, we would be so better off.  If we just got rid of the greedy insurance companies and gave everyone government paid for healthcare, we would be in progressive heaven in this area. Well, what if access to more healthcare and more involved healthcare resulted in poorer results??  Think about that because it may be somewhat true!