Word: systemic
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...care brain trust on July 28, his words seemed unequal to the task before him. Dr. Bob Kocher, a special assistant at the National Economic Council, was on the cream-colored brocade couch across from Obama, laying out figures that showed what a sinkhole the country's health-care system has become: the U.S. spends more to get less than just about every other industrialized country. Still, Obama and his team are aware that the more Americans learn about how Washington proposes to cure that system, the more skeptical they are about the whole enterprise. The more the public hears...
...interview in the Oval Office, Obama did not attempt to hide his frustration. "This has been the most difficult test for me so far in public life, trying to describe in clear, simple terms how important it is that we reform this system. The case is so clear to me. And when I sit with our policy advisers," he told me, pointing across the room to the spot where Kocher had given his presentation hours before, "when you start hearing the litany of facts, what you say to yourself is, This shouldn't be such a hard case to make...
...Clarity in describing the challenge is only one test. The hard part is making sure that in transforming a system that is bankrupting the country, Washington doesn't create a new one that does it even faster. Or that in expanding health coverage to the minority of Americans who don't have it, Washington doesn't leave the majority who do have it - and who like what they have - with less. The next 90 days will be particularly treacherous, as Obama's campaign to remake the health system enters its final, make-or-break stretch. The President will need...
...interview, Obama noted correctly that there is broad agreement about how to fix the inequities and inefficiencies of the current system: new insurance rules to make certain that people won't lose their coverage if they get sick; a marketplace or "exchange" where small businesses and those without coverage could purchase what suits them best; research that would show which treatments were effective and which were wasteful; a payment system that would give health-care providers incentives to focus on the quality rather than the quantity of care. And Obama has laid down a marker that any bill that passes...
Among a dozen likely protesters interviewed in Tehran, most of whom were recent university students, the picture that emerged was one of intense dissatisfaction with the theocratic regime, a system forcing its strict religious codes on a progressively more secular youth population. But many of them do not desire regime change or welcome the violence that would surround such a revolution. Many recall that their parents suffered through such chaos in the run-up to the 1979 Islamic revolution (coincidentally fueled by gatherings commemorating the 40-day anniversaries of those killed in street clashes). Nor do today's young protesters...