By Michael L. Millenson

The Obama-Biden Transition Team has encouraged individuals across the country to gather in small groups with friends and neighbors to discuss their ideas for health care reform. The team provided a background paper, discussion guide and a specific list of questions as a framework within which citizens could provide feedback to health reform czar-designate Tom Daschle. More than a thousand would-be hosts have officially registered on the change.gov website, and my wife and I were recently invited to one such gathering in a small village (yes, that’s the official designation) north of Chicago. My report below is not the official one.

‘Twas three nights before Christmas, and despite cold and stormWe’d gathered together to talk health care reform.Clutching Team Obama’s brief questionnaireWe went over each item with scrupulous care.Middle-class, middle-aged and in the MidwestWith our host’s college kids for reality test.O’er the country many thousands had signed up for the sameDespite fear “special interests” would come rig the game.But as we plain folk gathered by the living room fireWe closely read instructions, then vented our ire.

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By Matthew Holt

Don’t worry, the WSJ Opinion only makes sense because they let Zeke Emmanuel and Ron Wyden write an op-ed. The article is called Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job? and it’s impossible to argue with the logic about why we ought to move away from employer-based insurance.

There is of course an argument amongst those of us who both want to move to a social insurance system and want to have universal insurance as to whether this should be done in the voucher-type model that Emmanuel & Vic Fuchs have proposed (which looks a little like how the Dutch now do it) or whether we need to go to a modified single/multiple payer system like the French/Japanese/Brits/Australians.

I gave a talk in Canada the other night suggesting that there was some potential for convergence, and I used the very recent Commonwealth Fund data looking at the experiences of the chronically ill in seven nations. What is very interesting to me is that in terms of access to primary care and in terms of disease management, the Canadians and Americans look roughly similar—and not too good. As for specialty care, well as we know the Canadians & Brits ration by time and the Americans ration by money (or socio-economic status).

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