New York Times
February 11, 2006
To the Editor:
Your Feb. 3 editorial “The Lopsided Bush Health Plan” nicely summarizes all the reasons why health savings accounts are a very bad idea and will not help solve the nation’s health crisis. But it disappoints at the end by failing to suggest what kinds of reforms might really work.
The evidence seems clear: Market-based policies cannot produce the system we need. Isn’t it time to consider a unified “single payer” insurance arrangement (“Medicare for all”) coupled with thoroughgoing reform of the delivery side as well?
Arnold S. Relman, M.D.
Boston, Feb. 3, 2006
The writer, professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, 1977-91.