Timothy Noah’s Guide to Following the Health Reform Debate

June 22, 2009 by Frank Pasquale · 1 Comment
Filed under: Proposed Legislation

Noah has been doing some great articles on health reform, and here is his selection of “must-read” sources. Noah boils down the latest Senate Finance Committee Bill as follows:

It appears designed to achieve two contradictory goals: to lower the bill’s cost and to reassure the insurance lobby. These are achieved at the expense of extending and improving Americans’ access to health care, which some might say is the whole point of passing a reform bill. . . .

In the July 2 New York Review of Books, Arnold Relman writes, “Things will have to get still worse before major reform becomes politically possible. The legislation likely to emerge from this Congress will not control—and will probably even exacerbate—the inflation of costs.” When I read these words earlier this week, I thought Relman, who’s been advocating major health reform for decades, was writing off current efforts too hastily. Now I’m not so sure.

The past week was a very difficult one for real health care reform. It will take some real jawboning to get reform worth having back on track.

Tags: Health Care Reform, Health Reform, Private Insurance, Senate Finance Committee, Timothy Noah

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One Response to “Timothy Noah’s Guide to Following the Health Reform Debate”

staticlinjumper says:

07/15/2009 at 10:24 am

Noah doesn’t know boo about health care. He borrows lazily from real experts, toes a transparent PR line in many of his pieces — and recently attacked Senator Kennedy on the basis of flimsy innuendo and a factual premise recently exploded by an overwhelming Senate vote. When he’s wrong, as he was on Iraq, he writes “How Did I Get This Wrong?.. Forget What I Got Wrong”

Reserve your plugs for someone like Atul Gawande

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