by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
I have a longer, um, "review" that I'll post later today, but it's not clear to me that the thesis of Jonathan Cohn's new book Sick suggests the problem with the American health care system it's a lack of money. Rather, it's what that money is used, or not used, to do, and who gets access to it. Those without health insurance are denied a good deal of care, and even those with insurance often find that their coverage doesn't insulate them from financial catastrophe. Instead, as Paul Krugman says, the health insurance & hospital industry spends an awful lot of money figuring out who is going to cost a lot of money to keep healthy, then deny them coverage or sue them to collect debts. Sick had surprisingly little to do with poor health care, and much more to do with poor health insurance coverage.
Of course, I could be entirely wrong about all of this.
Update: I forgot to leave out the key detail of what I was responding to: Kevin Drum's piece pushing a review of Sick appearing in this month's Washington Monthly.
