Debate on National Health Care

Universal health care. Generally, that phrase is used as rhetoric to guide voters to support that particular candidate. Michael Moore used his documentary Sicko to play with the idea, and also pointed out the many flaws in our current system. Our own Quynh Nguyen commented on this movie and topic as well in Student Pharmacist.

This past month, the New England Journal of Medicine had a great commentary on our broken system, or non-system. It also brings up the safety-net, part of which our HRSA-PSCC grant helps to support. This commentary points out that any major shift in policy has to come from our leadership responding to public opinion as it did with the FDR's New Deal in 1932 and with LBJ's Great Society in 1964. Recently, the Clinton health care reform proposal was brought forth by then First Lady Hilary Clinton. (I like Wikipedia.)

There is no end of commentary, research, opinions and examples from other countries of the pros and cons of universal health care. It's a tough concept for us to imagine here since we our current system has essentially lasted for the past two generations. Whether it's right or wrong to pursue universal health care, I think we can all agree that something must change. What that change will look like, will, for better or worse, come from our elected officials. The more we make our voices heard, the better chance we have of having an influence.

And one more study from JAMA looking at the approval ratings of health care in seven countries. Moral: I'm moving to the Netherlands.