Health Care: Give the People What They Want

• Most Americans want pretty much the same outcome from health care reform, and it’s not what either major-party candidate is offering.
• Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis
• Chris Hedges | America's Superficial Health Care Debate Silences Single-Payer Supporters
• The Real Health Care Debate

Robert Scheer, Truthdig

The button reads “I’m a doctor, and I support health reform.” The Supreme Court, pictured in the background, could soon decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act. AP/Charles Dharapak

The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that’s not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, who has been reborn as a celebrant of the old, pre-Obama system with a few nips and tucks.

As the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Obama health care approach, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to come up with a better plan. They know that the current system is unsustainable. Only a third of those polled favored the law President Barack Obama signed, but according to the AP, “... Whatever people think of the law, they don’t want a Supreme Court ruling against it to be the last word on health care reform.” The article continued, “More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”

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Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis ~ John C. Goodman, Reviewed by the Independent Institute
The most important problems that plague American healthcare arise because virtually all of us—patients, doctors, caregivers, employers, employees, etc.—are locked into a system fraught with perverse incentives that raise the cost of healthcare, reduce its quality, and make care less accessible than it should be.

Chris Hedges | America's Superficial Health Care Debate Silences Single-Payer Supporters, Chris Hedges, Truthdig

• The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation ... and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages.... But you would never know this by listening to the Democratic Party and the advocacy groups that purport to support universal health care but seem more intent on re-electing Obama.
• Should Supreme Court Find Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional?
• The Real Health Care Debate

The Real Health Care Debate, Chris Hedges, Truthdig

• Lost between conservatives and Democratic front groups were a few stalwarts including public health care advocates Dr. Margaret Flowers, Dr. Carol Paris and attorneys Oliver Hall, Kevin Zeese and Russell Mokhiber who displayed a banner that read: “Single Payer Now! Strike Down the Obama Mandate!”
• Should Supreme Court Find Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional?
• The case for universal care at the state level