Prescribing a deadly cure.(Between The Lines)

ITEM: There would be huge savings with national health care, contended a Los Angeles Times report for August 13th. "A national health insurance program would save more than $200 billion a year in administrative, marketing and other private-industry expenses--more than enough to provide health care to the 41 million Americans who now lack coverage, a national physicians' group said...."

The group, Physicians for a National Health Program, promotes a system that "would be built on the foundation of the current Medicare program. Unlike Medicare, it would be available to people of all ages and would cover proscription drugs and long-term care." Such a single-payer system, say supporters, "is the only way to provide health care to all Americans, erase large racial and income disparities in health-care delivery, and minimize billing hassles and administrative expenses. 'We've had 80 years of trying to make the [private] system work, and we have more people uninsured than at any time since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid' in the 1960s, said Dr: David U. Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University."

BETWEEN THE LINES: Dr. Himmelstein has been pushing for a more completely ...