Minute debates over details of a new health care plan will do Americans little good until they’ve answered a far more fundamental question, said best-selling author and commentator T.R. Reid.
The more relevant question is “Are we ready to make a moral commitment” to providing every American with basic health care, Reid said. Speaking to the Denver Forum about his hit volume “The Healing of America,” Reid said America is the only industrialized democracy that hasn’t truly confronted the question.
Every other wealthy nation, Reid said, has answered with an adamant “yes,” and designed some structure that provides medical care fairly to everyone, at lower rates than in the U.S.
Reid, a popular correspondent on National Public Radio and in The Washington Post, spent the past few years traveling the world studying health care models for public television documentaries. He told about 60 guests at the Denver Forum that Americans should stop falsely priding themselves on having excellent health care, and take the best ideas from Germany, Canada and Britain.
Many systems use less “socialized” medicine than the U.S. already has in Medicare, Reid said. The U.S. could pay for all uninsured simply by achieving the efficiency of France, which spends 4 percent of medical costs on administration compared with 20 percent in the U.S.
Traveling in the U.S. to support the book, though, Reid said he has heard enough to convince him that “it seems Americans aren’t ready for really big change. At least Max Baucus isn’t ready for really big change.”
