With health care emerging as a major issue in the 2008 presidential race, NEWSWEEK asked seven Harvard experts to identify specific problems that ought to be addressed, and the steps that should be taken to solve them.
Comment: Maybe someone should look at the big pharmaceutical rip-off (ex. all the peopole who take Lipitor don't need it!) and insist that people take more control of their own health instead of expecting the rest of us to take care of them after they have abused their bodies through poor diets, smoking, drinking, and on it goes.
Comment: With ???A Big Dose of Skepticism???, ???Rx for Health Care: Pain???, and ???Cures for an Ailing System??? in the issue of December 10, 2007, the editors of Newsweek certainly raised our consciousness on health care. Thank you.
With the exception of the Samuelson judgment call (???Rx for Health Care: Pain???) you have only told me about ???status quo???. ???Status quo???, among other things, is non-competitive and physician-, pharmaceutical, and hospital-centric. We are in a health care crisis. Have I missed something or did ???status quo??? get us into crisis. Do you really expect ???status quo??? to get us out of the crisis? Give us responsibility with a free market and ???freedom of choice???. Give all qualified, trained, and capable health care providers ???freedom of practice???.
To me, ???alternative??? does not mean ???quackery or snake oil??? unless you are brainwashed by ???status quo???. It means ???choice??? that is not ???status quo???. ???A Big Dose of Skepticism??? is a fair assessment of ???quackery and snake oil???, but it unfairly condemns the 2.5 million alternative health care providers who are NOT physicians (i.e., nurses, chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical and massage therapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, mid-wives, behavioral therapists, et al.).
Health care is business and ???Cures for an Ailing System??? just covered ???status quo???. Why didn???t you interview Harvard business professors like Dr. Clayton Christianson (author of the ???Innovator??? series of books) or Dr Regina Herzlinger (author of ???Who Killed Health Care????). ???Status quo??? spends more money (universal coverage) on ???status quo???. When will we spend money smarter? Good luck with problems like diabetes, obesity, and mental health issues, ???status quo???; regretfully, you can???t handle them.
Comment: America's crisis of over insurance is much greater that the crisis of uninsurance. In other countries, patients control more health care dollars than insurers or government bureaucrats. In the U.S., only 13 cents of every dollar is paid directly by patients. On the other hand, the notion that we spend less because our employers or the government control the other 87 cents is obviously absurd: we pay for it indirectly through lower wages and higher taxes. Take the money away from the employers and the government and give it back to the patients who need it. This will be done through tax reform: deductions and credits like Rudy Giuliani has proposed.
Comment: Dr. Swartz hits the most important points. Her point about coverage for the currently uninsured is the more obvious and the starting point for everything else. That we should have such a large portion of our population uncovered is a national disgrace that should shame politicians who are forever prattling to our self-congratulation about what a great country the US is.
Almost equally important, and less obvious, is that our unique system of relying on employers to finance health coverage, never ideal, has become increasingly unsustainable. We should be starting down the road to weening ourselves from that system, if replacing it with a fairer, wiser, less administratively costly system on the model of Medicare that eliminates both employers and insurers from the chain.
Chuck in Wyoming
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STRATEGIES Harmonix, creator of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, is changing videogames.
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CAMPAIGN 2008 John McCain's choice to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma's repressive regime.
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