I strongly recommend folks listen to T.R. Reid’s Seattle Town Hall Speaker’s Forum. Reid authored “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care” after studying heath care in various nations of the world. The talk he gave did the best job I have heard of outlining the different systems and targeting why ours works so badly.

He describes four basic models:

The Beverage Model, named after Lord Beverage, commissioned by Winston Churchill to develop the British system.  This is socialized medicine, similar to our Veteran’s Administration system.

The Bismarck Model, also set up after the war, but for Germany.  It follows the private system used here when employers pay a share of the employee’s premium.

The Canadian Model, a national system, but the service providers are not government employees as in the Beverage system.

The Out-of-pocket system also prevalent here, but mainly used in the world’s poorest nations, where there is no safety net and you only get the health care you can pay for.

One of his most adroit observations is that, except for the out-of-pocket system, any system applied universally cuts costs by about half and provides better, more reliable care.  The reason our lower quality care costs twice as much is because we use a patchwork system including all of the above.

Another interesting observation concerned administrative overhead.  Again, in other systems, administration adds at most 5% to costs.  Not so in the US, where administration adds an average of 25%.

Finally, he allows that universal single-payer is not necessarily the best, that some of the best care in the world is provided by private insurance companies.  The difference is that every other nation with a system has decided that health care should not be a for profit marketplace commodity and that all citizens should have equal access to equal quality care.  Private companies under this precept are more strictly regulated, as we now regulate gas and electric utilities, for instance.

Anyway, after visiting something like 190 countries, he does a lot better job explaining it than I can.  Take a listen.

It is not a matter of “us” listening. Until Congress listens, or the President takes Congress behind the woodshed, publicly, nothing much will change.

Congress has some of the World’s experts at its’ disposal, and the two bills produced today, is more of the same.

Campaign contributions are corrupting the political elite from taking care of us, before they take care of themselves.

The bills before Congress force everyone to obtain insurance or be fined, or jailed. What kind of insurance, PRIVATE 24KARAT GOLD PLATED insurance, from private companies with no limit as to what they can charge.

This is not free market capitalism, this is cronyism.

The single largest avoidable savings that can be wrung from our system is tort reform. Doctors practice defensive medicine, in fear of attorneys.

A Democtaic Congress will never control this cost, as it will cost them campaign contributions. It doe not help that the over whelming majority in Congress, and the White house ...

... are also attorney’s.

This issue has been studied to death, and there are a variety of changes that can be made that would change our system for the better.

The changes needed are clear. There are too many systems in the world that have been studied to death, for us to plead ignorance.

Pleading corruption, would at least be honest.

We will never get affordable and efficient medical care in the US, as long as we leave the current Congressional members in control, as they have now proven that they are not capable of putting the citizens first.

I honestly hope they lard the current bill up with pork and pass it. It may take a crisis to break the logjam preventing efficient health care that is affordable, and passage of this bill will create the crisis.

I just hope that the proponents of this bill, will admit its failures and join together to pass real reform, that we desperately need.

They say a crisis shouldn’t be wasted.

There is one in the making.

I’ll add my depressing 2 cents worth - The Federal Government of these here United States of America is utterly corrupt. It operates for the benefit of wealthy corporate interests and the military. It regards the American people as useful only insofar as they can be fleeced. Its police agencies, secret and otherwise, are racketeers, and its minions lie as a matter of habit.

It will never pass any health care bill which does anything to threaten the status quo. And any health care bill which passes will be cumbersome, inefficient, expensive, and corrupt. All of the earnest efforts of tens of thousands of citizen volunteers for health care reform are given the back of the hand by Max Baucus smirking as he stage-manages a show of hearings, where dissenters (we want single-payer healthcare!) are arrested by uniformed thugs.

I can’t believe this country ever had a revolution. The tories are in charge and they’re worse than the Brits ever were.

And the handsome fellow in the White House is on the payroll, always has been. He could never have been a candidate otherwise.

What a pathetic end to a remarkable experiment, killed by greed and unjust dominion and institutionalized sociopathology.

I think the only solution is abdication (the Amish tactic)- don’t deal with corrupt corporations, don’t pay federal taxes (the hard way - by reducing income), and definitely don’t watch TV, which is the most subtle and malevolent and sophisticated of mind control systems. (Control by distraction).

Consider this: what benign institution spends trillions on agressive foreign wars, but won’t look after the health of its citizens? Gives trillions to corrupt banks that created a financial crisis, and allows them to charge the poorest over 400% interest rates? And gives hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to corporate farmers to grow unhealthy food (creating an epidemic of obesity and diabetes), but makes illegal a benign plant which requires no pesticides and was grown by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington?

Things are pretty good in our little green and furry corner. But the tentacles of corruption are growing, not shrinking, despite Mr. Hope & Change. False hope and change only of the hired help.

People don’t want to believe their government holds them in contempt. They want to believe the fairy stories they were told in school. Someday, maybe, they’ll wake up to the sad reality and our wall will fall.

This is a great idea.  I don’t think there is anything in the current version of the senate bill that precludes the creation of such an organization.  I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that a co-op can become part of the exchange, as long as it meets the requirements set by the commissioner.  Now is the time for a change in the status quo, if there has ever been a time.