The Debate Goes On....

"Yes, American health care is an appallingly patched-together ship, with rotting timbers, water leaking in, mercenaries on board and 15% (47 million) of the passengers thrown over the rails just to keep it afloat. But hundreds of millions of people depend on it. The system provides more than 35 million hospital stays a year, 64 million surgical procedures, 900 million office visits, 3.5 billion prescriptions. It represents a 6th of our economy. There is no dry-docking health care for a few months, or even for an afternoon, while we rebuild it. Grand plans admit no possibility of mistakes or failures, or the chance to learn from them. If we get things wrong, people will die. This doesn't mean that ambitious reform is beyond us. But we have to start with what we have."

-Atul Guwande
"Getting There from Here," The New Yorker