Editorial: Fractured system hurts everyone
By Register Editorial Board
The Des Moines Register
December 4, 2005
If the best minds in the world gathered to devise a health-care system for the United States, it would look nothing like what we have today.
No one would create a fragmented system that provides taxpayer-funded care for some and not for others. A system that leaves 45 million people, about 15 percent of the population, uninsured. That wastes billions on administrative costs. That burdens business. That relegates the United States behind other industrialized countries in life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates.
No one would intentionally create a model of health care that was unfair, inefficient and nearly impossible for an average person to navigate.
Yet that is exactly what the United States has. And it hurts everyone.
Reforming (the U.S. health-care system) will take leadership in Washington, pressure from individuals and businesses across the nation and a hard look at what other countries are doing better.
America’s hodgepodge of health care isn’t the best system for this country. It’s not what the brightest minds would choose now. Americans don’t have to accept it just because it’s the only thing they know.
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051204/OPINION03/512040307/1001/NEWS
Today’s edition of The Des Moines Register has a several articles on “Condition Critical,” focusing on “worries about soaring health care costs.”
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=NEWS&theme=condition_critical&template=theme