by Michael Goldfarb*
Europeans live longer; shake their heads over US attitudes toward universal healthcare.
In America, the healthcare debate is about to come to a boil. President Barack Obama has put pressure on both houses of Congress to pass versions of his flagship domestic legislative program prior to their August recess.
Opponents were filling the airwaves with the usual litany of lies, damned lies and statistics about “socialized medicine” and the twin nightmare of bureaucratically rationed healthcare and high taxes amongst allies like Britain, France and Germany.
So here is a brief overview …

by Alan Mascarenhas*
Australia’s health system offers cradle-to-grave healthcare for “all citizens, covering most or all of the costs for physician consultations as well as specialists’ fees and X-rays and pathology tests. Treatment in public hospitals is free!”
Here’s a damning statistics: Australia spends 8.7% of GDP on healthcare and covers everyone, irrespective of their employment status. The United States, meanwhile, spends 16% of its GDP on healthcare—far more than any country in the world—yet 47 million of its citizens lack health insurance, while millions more are under-insured.
Critics of nationalized healthcare paint …

by Eustaquio Abay II, M.D.*
I am a registered Republican, contributed to Republican political campaigns. I wept when Pres. John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert, were assassinated. I am an active neurosurgeon in Kansas and am seriously concerned about healthcare for my family, my employees and my fellow Americans.
Much rhetoric has been hurled by Democrats and Republicans against each other in the last several months about healthcare reform. We have likewise aligned ourselves with one or the other. But there must be times when we should all think neither, but …

by Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-HI*
Aloha—The US Congress has been grappling with how to provide all our citizens with access to affordable, quality healthcare since the time of Pres. Harry Truman. H.R. 3962 represents a critical milestone in the effort to reform our healthcare system. I will be voting for the bill.
For those who have it, health insurance is not something you can take for granted. Every day 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance coverage. A recent US treasury Department report noted that approximately half of all Americans under the age …

by Kathleen E. McLaughlin
As their wife and mother lay dying, emaciated and contorted with pain from the final stages of her terminal colon cancer, the Yang family’s last hope arrived in a shiny gold box sent from 1,500 miles away.
They had seen the Chinese herbal medicine advertised on television, with promises to ease pain and rejuvenate health. It only cost $15, but its failure seems to have broken the family’s final hope that Yang Xuehan might survive. They seemed to believe that if it came from Beijing, it was more …

by Kathleen E. McLaughlin
While the healthcare reform battle rages in Washington, China has been quietly revamping its own massive healthcare system with decidedly mixed results.
The price at a Beijing hospital explains a lot about what is wrong with China’s healthcare system: an appendectomy by a leading surgeon available to any Chinese citizen for $34.
This is not because the doctors or the equipment came cheap. Peking University People’s Hospital attracts the top medical talent in the country. It has the 7th highest-paid doctors in China and import cutting-edge technology from …

by Kathleen E. McLaughlin*
As the United States is once again mired in a debate about healthcare reform, across the Pacific the world’s largest socialist country is trying to piece together some semblance of universal healthcare for its 1.3 billion citizens.
China’s healthcare system was once a model of low-cost, efficient delivery that served hundreds of millions of people. The system began to fall apart in the 1980s, with the disbanding of the socialist economy. State-owned companies that had promised cradle-to-grave coverage to their employees were privatized. Often there was nobody to …

by Rawlein G. Soberano, Ph.D.
If Canadians are looking to the US for the care they need, they’ll be disappointed because Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable healthcare model. There’s no question that American healthcare, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess. Over the last 5 years, health insurance premiums have doubled (it happened during the GOP watch), leaving large corporations, like General Motors bankrupt, which are just starting to come back. Expensive American healthcare has sent many families to the poorhouse. It is not …

by Kevin Dahill*
Our nation is in the midst of a profoundly important discussion about the healthcare system. The often contentious debates at public forums around the country demonstrate how deeply personal the prospect of healthcare reform is to many Americans. But while change may be frightening, it is necessary.
If the rancor and distortions that have characterized the debate succeed in directing the tentative reform negotiations in Washington, change eventually will come anyway, but perhaps with much more dire consequences.
It’s hard to organize against the need for reform: the tens of …

by Connie Schultz*

So many Americans believe only the people who scare them. A thoughtful debate over healthcare reform has devolved into scenes of screaming protests by mostly red-faced senior citizens looking frightened and enraged. Their terror is stoked by cynical political operatives who know that, when it comes to stirring up the masses, nothing beats scaring people to death.
In politics, the emotions that really sway voters are hate, hope, and fear or anxiety, psychologist Drew Westen told Newsweek in 2007. He is the author of The Political Brain: The Role …