Better, Cheaper, Fairer (and mostly, fairer!)

The most good sense I have heard from anyone talking about the health care issue has come from T. R. Reid, in a program called "Can We Really Fix U.S. Health Care?" We recently saw this program on the LINK television network.

Reid's most recent book (which I will be buying, just so I can vote with my 20 bucks in support of what he is saying) is called The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

This is an excerpt from an article he wrote for The Washington Post.

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.