Health care is one of the issues I’m more passionate about. I’m embarrassed U.S. health statistics are so poor compared to other industrial nations. I think Americans deserve quality health care as much as citizens of other modern industrial nations.
One of my hesitations in supporting Obama (compared to other Democrats not McCain) was what I considered was his weak and somewhat misguided positions on health care.
After reading a Los Angeles Times article on the people working on his health care plans, I’m not confident the Obama administration will do much to help us catch up with the rest of the modern industrial world.
The Times story is about Ezekiel Emanuel, older brother of Rahm whose new job is
special advisor to Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, he is at the table with a small circle of trusted insiders crafting healthcare policy.
Dr. Emanuel isn’t much interested in overhauling the system to make the critical changes we really need.
"You are not going to flip a switch and change our system," he said in a recent interview. "It’s got to be an evolution, not a revolution."
In fact, some of Dr. Emanuel’s ideas are straight out of the Republican play book to privatize the world.
Some were put off by proposals in a book he had written, including a plan to scrap Medicare, Medicaid and employer-based health insurance in favor of vouchers that people could use to purchase coverage.
Scrap Medicare and Medicaid and give vouchers? Now there is a plan for disaster!
If the Obama administration is serious about giving our citizens quality health care, they need put people like Arnold S. Relman in charge. As professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine he understands what factors are needed to structure a health care system that truly serves a nation’s citizens.
At the very least, everyone involved in planning our health reforms need to read Relman’s book, A Second Opinion: Rescuing America’s Health Care; A Plan for Universal Coverage Serving Patients Over Profit.