Health Care For America Now

NEWS

Obama health choice hears tales of health care woe - Chicago Tribune

President-elect Barack Obama's choice to overhaul the nation's health care system told a town hall meeting that the task is not impossible if all sides work together.

New Model of Care Is Needed, Experts Say - New York Times

American medicine is already in a crisis mode when it comes to geriatric care, and the problem will only become worse unless new approaches are found, experts say.

Health Plan Restraints Might Keep Patients From Choosing Quality Care - EMaxHealth

Public reports on the quality of care delivered by health plans might motivate patients to choose better providers — if they are not constrained by issues of cost and accessibility to doctors, according to a review of recent studies.

Obama's Health Care Team Pumps Message - Washington Post

Dolly Sweet, 77, has battled cancer more than once. She's a fighter. But when her doctor recently prescribed a medication that cost $35,000 a year, she felt she had no choice.

OPINION

Orszag's Health Warning - Wall Street Journal

Democrats are gearing up for a new run at health care next year, which is another way of saying that it's an arms race to promise the most while disguising the costs. So when the expensive realities of "universal" coverage somehow intrude, taxpayers can't afford to let those moments disappear down the Beltway memory hole.

Obama Will Ration Your Health Care - Wall Street Journal

People are policy. And now that President-elect Barack Obama has fielded his team of Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services and Melody Barnes as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, we can predict both the strategy and substance of the new administration's health-care reform.

Is Massachusetts a model for national reform? - The Health Care Blog

I get asked this question a lot these days, which shouldn’t be that surprising. Harvard Pilgrim is headquartered in Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts health care reform plan is already a couple of years old. More importantly, it has added about 440,000 people to the insured ranks (185,000 through unsubsidized private plans and another 255,000 through subsidized, Medicaid-like coverage), has maintained high employer participation (over 70%) and doesn’t appear to be crowding out private coverage as public coverage expands.

Social Networks and Health Care Reform: An Experiment - Francine Hardaway

Between Christmas and New Year’s I decided to try a “noble” experiment. I decided to invite people from my Facebook and Twitter networks to an Obama Health Care Reform party at my home. I want to see if the Obama administration’s social networks are real, and if the information flows both ways. You have to understand that my friends are an eclectic group of everything from ordinary senior citizens to A-list bloggers to idealists barely out of their teens, because each person belongs to several categories.