Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Swiss Menace

The Swiss Menace is a really good NY Times op-ed from Sunday by Paul Krugman. He outlines the healthcare options in clear terms.

The British system is like the VA, the Canadian system is like Medicare and the Swiss system is like what we have in Massachusetts and what the Obama plan is.

"If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That’s why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort. But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work."

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