Imaging a Different Future

By KIM BELLARD Two articles have me thinking this week.  One sets up the problem healthcare has (although healthcare is not explicitly mentioned), while the other illustrates it.  They share being about how we view the future.   The two articles are Ezra Klein’s Can Democrats See What’s Coming? in The New York Times Opinion pages and Derek Thompson’s Why Does America Make It So Hard to Be a Doctor? in The Atlantic. Both are well worth a read.   Mr. Klein struck a nerve for me by asking why, when it comes to social insurance programs, Democrats seem so insistent on replicating what has been done before, especially in Western Europe.  He asks: “But what about building here that which does not already exist there?”  He worries “that the Biden administration’s supply-side agenda is stuck in the past and not yet imagining the future.” Those are exactly the right questions we should be asking about healthcare. Our most ambitious healthcare reform proposals seem to either be the catch-all “Medicare For All” or the simplistic single payor. Both are rooted in the past, and in what has been done elsewhere.  We debate what coverage for which things who should have, how much they should have to pay at point-of-care versus upfront in taxes/premiums, and how much we should pay healthcare providers.  They are the same questions we’ve been debating since the 1940s.   They’re not the questions for the 21st century.   M...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Policy Public Health Kim Bellard Medical Education Medicare For All supply-side agenda Source Type: blogs