Word: reformer
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...those situations where it's so obvious that the system we have isn't working well for too many people, and that we could just be doing better." He was talking about health care, of course. As Washington collapsed toward its August recess, the President's reform efforts were looking distinctly iffy, even though he is absolutely right about the need for change. The system is a fiscal mess, the king of all budget busters. It is also a moral mess, leaving far too many Americans with far too little protection. But the President is wrong when he says...
...pressures of partisanship have forced other contortions. It seems obvious that the cost of malpractice insurance cripples doctors - and drives up the number of tests and procedures they perform in order to bulletproof themselves against lawsuits. Obama has said he is open to malpractice reform, but congressional Democrats haven't included it in their bills because trial lawyers are a major Democratic special-interest group. Another Democratic interest group, organized labor, has blocked the most logical and progressive way to fund a universal health-care system - eliminating the tax exclusion on health benefits and replacing it with a progressive...
...presidency, Clinton told me that the biggest mistake he made in trying to reform health care was pulling a pen out of his pocket during the 1994 State of the Union address and threatening to veto any health-care legislation that didn't achieve universal coverage. He had come to believe that the only way to get something big like health-care reform was to do it incrementally. Obama has been wise not to make any take-it-or-leave-it offers. He is still fighting for a comprehensive bill - and he still may get one. But he may have...
...details of the plan, respondents remained supportive of many of the rough outlines of the health-reform effort as originally described by President Obama. Sixty-three percent said they would support providing health-care coverage for all Americans, even if the government had to subsidize those who could not afford it. Fifty-six percent said they supported a "public health insurance option" to compete with private plans. Fifty-seven percent support raising taxes on those with annual incomes over $280,000 to pay for the plan. Eighty percent said they would support a bill that required insurance companies to offer...
...covered by some kind of health insurance, and of that group 86% said they were "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with their plan. Only 33% of respondents said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about losing their coverage in the next year. (See the five biggest hurdles to health-care reform...