Another quote of Uwe Reinhardt from the February 27 conference on "Bipartisan Paths to Expand Health Coverage"
:
"And I said this is the only issue (covering the uninsured) I actually take seriously. All the rest of American health policy to me, as you well know, is a joke or a source of humor. This one really is not."
"... health insurance gives you financial protection. It protects you bankruptcy of families in the United States... And one may well ask what kind of society is it where if a family member gets stricken with cancer, the family also goes bankrupt with all the stress and indignity of that. You cannot travel in France as an American and hold up your head, that we allow this sort of thing to happen. Someone has a child sick with cancer and the family goes broke. That is uncivilized in the eyes of Europeans and Canadians, and in the eyes of many Americans, most of us here included."
The transcript of the conference is available at:
<http://www.kaisernetwork.org/admin/healthcast/uploaded_files/kff022701a.pdf>http://www.kaisernetwork.org/admin/healthcast/uploaded_files/kff022701a.pdf