Health Care Reform in the US

Op-Ed Columnist - Health Care Realities - NYTimes.com: "Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage."

As the recess of Congress for a month is beginning next week people are currently summarizing the situation of the debate concerning the Health care reform in the press. Read about the notion of free markets not working for health care in Krugman's blog the other day but here he make more solid arguments for this.

There is a discussion now on the public component of the reform and Krugman rightly points out that the government is already deeply involved. Nancy Pelosi said yesterday on The Huffington Post blog that the health insurance industry are the "villains". On the other hand Karl Rove said that the US have the best health care in the world and most people are insured and so it shall be. Charles Krauthammer said that Obamacare is in retreat and that yes Obama will get a bill coming Christmas that he can call reform but not much will change and that a European style health care would not materialize.

David Brooks pointed out the other day that the health care business in the US is a budget of the size of Britain's total economy. It is of course easy to understand that it will take quite a lot to make changes in this system when only half the public think there is a crisis at all.

If it is true that the Americans have the best care in the world, it might be interesting to speculate if it is necessary with a private system to achieve this? The Americans have many of the best schools also but schools are different because the quality of the students matter whereas patients are the same in the best and the worst hospitals.

If the free market doesn't work for health insurances, and we just discovered that banks don't work either, which according to Alan Greenspan gave rise to the financial crisis, maybe the free market theory have severe problems or limitations rather? Banks, health care and the military! Important institutions indeed. What do they have in common? They deal in the livelihood of people.