Health Care Reform: T.R. Reid’s View
Frank LipmanAugust 31

Everyone is talking about health care reform, so I thought this week I would do some blogs on what I think have been some relevant discussions. Today I link to a recent piece in the Washington Post by T.R. Reid, who is a journalist and author of 9 books. He set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, exploring health-care systems around the world in an effort to understand why the U.S. remains the only first world nation to refuse its citizens universal health care and how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. He recently published a book about it The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

He wrote an article recently for the Washington Post addressing the 5 Myths About Health Care Around the World. Here are the 5 myths

1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation.
5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

For the full article and to see how he backs up each argument, check out Reid’s full posting on Washington Post.

Reid was the lead correspondent for the 2008 Frontline documentary Sick Around the World, which examined five other capitalist democracies, looking for lessons on health-care delivery.