Occasionally, I want to share something with the world.
David Goldhill has a poignant and compelling article in the Atlantic Monthly titled How American Health Care Killed My Father about health-care reform. It deserves reading in it’s entirety.
The potential outcome Goldhill proposes is very similar to that advanced in John Mackey’s Op-Ed in the WSJ, except it’s more convincing, not nearly as strident, and doesn’t have an antagonistic title. Job better done.
Ted Kennedy died earlier today. The NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have all published moving tributes to him.
There’s also an article that might get lost in the shuffle, but should not since it is a significant comment on the current debate on health-care reform. The US lags behind most developed countries on measures of public health and the cost-effectiveness of health-care delivered. One area, though, in which the US system leads others is in treating cancer. This is in large part due to cancer research funding from the federal government, i.e. government intervention in health-care. The American Cancer Society published a tribute to Kennedy lauding his work as a supporter of research on cancer.
This reminds me of the role Al Gore played in the Senate when the Internet and networked technologies were in their infancy, a role acknowledged by true Internet pioneers. Sometimes, a senator’s pet project can be a visionary success. Often, it’s a bridge to nowhere.
Salon writes about Churchill’s role in creating the NHS in a scathing commentary on the slurs being bandied about today. Many conservatives would much rather forget Churchill’s role int he creation of the British welfare state, and many more would like to forget that he went back and forth between the Liberal and Tory parties during his long political career. Churchill knew that a good idea can easily be taken too far by its most strident adherents.