Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Health care debate

 
    The rancorous hysteria surrounding the health-care debate is so pervasive it seems a deliberate attempt to raise tempers way past the level of rational thought. It has taken the question of how to fix an often dysfunctional, arbitrary and wildly expensive health-care system and turned it into a crusade against "government control of the citizenry", guided by "the wisdom of the founding fathers".
 
    If this type of jingoistic, delusional blather is not your idea of problem solving, I strongly recommend an article in the Dec. 14, 2009, issue of The New Yorker magazine, by Atul Gawande (available at www.newyorker.com). Dr. Gawande takes an insightful, unorthodox look at health-care, and notes similarities with an agricultural crisis our country was experiencing in the early 1900s. The solution to that crisis sheds some light, and hope, on our problems today.
 
Submitted by Paul Slavin

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