...a Princeton economist and long-time Bush critic who has a knack for explaining tricky issues in simple, understandable terms. While many other pundits are devoting their air time to the immigration debate (which still seems like a suspicious debate to me - how it kind of materialized out of thin air), Krugman recently co-wrote a great summary piece on health care reform. Here's the moral:A history of failed attempts to introduce universal health insurance has left us with a system in which the government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of the nation's health care, but the actual delivery both of insurance and of care is undertaken by a crazy quilt of private insurers, for-profit hospitals, and other players who add cost without adding value. A Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government directly provides insurance, would almost surely be both cheaper and more effective than what we now have. And we could do even better if we learned from "integrated" systems, like the Veterans Administration, that directly provide some health care as well as medical insurance...
If you're interested in an enjoyably insightful breakdown of our nation's health care challenges, check Krugman's full briefing here.
