Health care is on the mind of a lot of Americans. Will they be able to afford heath care? What kind of country are we that we can't guarantee health care for everyone? Should it be a guaranteed right? Should we require every American to carry health care insurance? Should we have a single payer system, that is should the government pay for health care for everyone or should we continue with a mixed system of public and private systems.
For the time being, generally speaking, I'm not going to write about the various proposals out there. I'll just pass along some links I think you should see.
In Britain the financial strains of government provided health care are showing when doctors say Don't treat the old and unhealthy
Among the survey of 870 family and hospital doctors, almost 60 per cent said the NHS could not provide full healthcare to everyone and that some individuals should pay for services.
One in three said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long. Half thought that smokers should be denied a heart bypass, while a quarter believed that the obese should be denied hip replacements.
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Gordon Brown promised this month that a new NHS constitution would set out people's "responsibilities" as well as their rights, a move interpreted as meaning restric tions on patients who bring health problems on themselves. The only sanction threatened so far, however, is to send patients to the bottom of the waiting list if they miss appointments.