Rev. Tom Mainor Comments on the debate and priorities:
The American public, the Congress and the News Media do not have before them accessible, sense-making comparative costs, figures. Nor do they see/hear/receive/have explained in common sense fashion the elements and considerable benefits to be derived via single payer, regional global budgeting, or the multiple payers that exchange mountains of bills each day, back and forth. Most of the proposals forthcoming are merely the rearrangement of desk chairs on the SS. US HEALTH COSTS DEBACLE.
Health care is too important to be left to the market place. Hopefully not medical and public health academia too.
It is hard enough to find out what one's insurance pays, how much of the co-payment has or has not been factored in, and whether or not one needs yet another supplementary policy to make certain bankruptcy is not just around the corner.
The ego and energy going into this particular conversation would better be spent on informing the public.
Come on, gentlemen. We are on the same side aren't we?
Tom Mainor
Uwe Reinhardt again responds to Theodore Marmor:
Ted:
I'm off on a trip over break and have only a few moments to reply, but let me try.
You took a few nice swings at me, which was fair enough, I suppose, but I do not think that you have answered my two fundamental questions I raised in my earlier e-mail, more sincerely than you may surmise:
1. How does democracy work in America? If your life depended on it, Ted, and someone asked you to compress your knowledge on this subject into, say, one written page that might be roughly right, what would you write down?
2. What do the American people, other than the providers or financial intermediaries of health care, want from their health system, and what kind of system would they really like to have?
Do I understand you to say that the people do not have a coherent, logically consistent view on what they want from their health system?
Is it the case that, whatever people may think in this regard at a moment, it takes very little to disinform and confuse them, and to shift their views (as, say, in California)?
Are you saying that, even if people had logically consistent and stable views on health policy, these views would be irrelevant under our system of government in any event, or are relevant only occasionally, in ways that can be predicted only ex post--e.g. by Shields and Brooks?
Having spoken at length on several occasions with Humphrey Taylor of Lou Harris, and having read on the matter, too, I do appreciate that it is very difficult to fathom through surveys what people really think about any issue, if only because the responses given are easily influenced by the way questions are framed. I am not really thinking about that problem. I am after what people actually might be thinking.
Best regards,
Uwe
Victor Sidel, M.D., Co-Founder and Past President, Physicians for Social Responsibility/USA and Co-Founder and Past Co-President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace), comments on the debate and on our priorities:
Don:
As you know, I'm off to Moscow to try to make a contribution to lessening the threat of use of nuclear weapons. That may be the reason I have little patience with this kind of argument. It's clear why economics is called "the dismal science." In a time when untold billions of additional dollars are being allocated to the US military and to "bioterrorism preparedness" while the DoD makes plans to use nuclear weapons (or threaten to use them), policy arguments about the exact percentage of GDP devoted to medical care (or the false predictions that were made about its rise) are dilatory or worse. Let's devote our time and energy to discussion of the political action needed for the achievement in our lifetimes of an equitable high-quality universal cost-effective medical care system for the United States.
Cordially, Vic
Dr. Sidel will be in Moscow March 24-26, and will deliver the paper, "Instead of Nuclear Weapons: An IPPNW Perspective on Nuclear Security, Human Security, and Global Security." The concept of human security is very directly related to our efforts on behalf of health care justice. Dr. Sidel has kindly consented to make this paper available to members of this list. Since it is four pages, it is too long to send it out to everyone with this message, but merely reply to this message and it will be forwarded to you as a Word attachment.