I do hope the president watches the Bill Moyers show.Dr. Marcia Angell, a single-payer advocate, doesn't think there's much in the President's plan to feel good about. But it's not just the particular version that she objects to — rather that the bill doesn't address what's fundamentally wrong with the American health care system.
"We have chosen, alone among all advanced countries, to leave health care to for-profit industries, to leave health care to businesses, that then distribute health care as a market commodity according to the ability to pay. And not according to medical need. So we have left the financing of health care to private insurance companies that have learned that they can thrive not by providing health care, but by not providing health care to sick people, by avoiding sick people."
The U.S. ranks highest in total cost of care, but according to a recent report by the Commonwealth Fund, it also ranks last among industrialized countries "in preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care."
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In 1999, Dr. Marcia Angell became the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, the premier journal of medical science in the United States.
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She's spot on!
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