Over the past sixty years, many solutions have been offered to reform our nation's broken health care system - a system characterized today by relentlessly rising costs, and a growing inability of people to pay for it.
Time and again, national reform proposals have been introduced and scrutinized primarily for their fiscal impact. Each time, these proposals have failed to achieve the support necessary to be implemented.
We have long felt that fiscal analysis alone is insufficient to the task of reform. Why? Because whether you are a political leader, a corporate CEO, an economist, a school teacher, a parent -- when you or someone very important to you becomes ill you want attentive, quality care immediately.
It's not just that the increasing cost of health care is reducing opportunities to invest in other areas of our society, or that it is reducing our competitiveness in the global economy, or that it is rife with inefficiencies. It is all that. But from the perspective of a society that values attention to the suffering of its members, it is also something more.
There are a lot more folks out there talking about broadening the perspective on the health care reform debate beyond finances, including Susan Blumenthal and Denis Cortese, who espouse seven strategies to address the nation's health care crisis. Lincoln Weed and Lawrence Weed argue for addressing medicine's missing foundation. And Anne Tumlinson reminds us not to overlook our long-term care facilities when embarking upon reform.
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