The Real Health Care Crisis

No candidate has the answer.

After listening to various vague outlines for improving health care in America offered by the three Presidential hopefuls, it's clear that this problem will remain with us for a long, long time. All of the plans more or less accept the underlying system with its waste and redundancies and promise improvements which either won't work (McCain) or which expand coverage without addressing the increased expenses (Hillary and Barak).

In a way it's a clear victory for the health care and pharma lobbies. The tens of millions of dollars they have poured into electing obedient legislators and Presidents has been excellent value. Harvard Business School estimates that there are $200 Billion in redundant, unnecessary marketing and administrative expenses in our current system which could be eliminated by going to a single payer system. Barak seems to recognize that such a system would be better than what he is proposing, but he candidly admitted that it was simply not politically feasible. Hillary offers a warmed over version of Mitt's failed Massachusetts plan while McCain offers Bushian platitudes about competition.

Until we address the fundamental issues that our health care system faces, we will continue to pay too much of too little for too few.