Is the goal of health care reform merely to save lives?

Is the goal of health care reform merely to save lives? If so, there are much better ways to do it than universal health insurance, as indicted by Daniel Akst in The Atlantic:

A new Harvard study estimates that lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans annually, which is 2.5 times as many as the previous best estimate commonly cited in the health care debate. This is a big difference (27,000 additional lives). But it still pales in comparison with the more than one million Americans who die annually by their own hands--which they use to light cigarettes, lift forks and convey too many alcoholic beverages to their lips.

Continue ReadingIs the goal of health care reform merely to save lives?

Rep. Anthony Weiner: Why do we need health insurers at all?

New York Representative Anthony Weiner is my new hero. It's clearly time for a single payor system and it appears that progressives are finally getting the courage to speak up for it. There is no rationality in a system that syphons health care dollars off as profits to big insurance corporations. Kudos to Rachel Maddow for prominently featuring this issue.

Continue ReadingRep. Anthony Weiner: Why do we need health insurers at all?