Reply #4: Not sure, but here is another longer interview... [View All]

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=more_than_a_prayer_for_single_payer

"The notion of a Canadian-style "single-payer" health system -- essentially, replacing costly private insurers with a government body or bodies to pay for healthcare -- has long been dismissed by elite politicians and pundits. But the popular response to Michael Moore's new documentary "Sicko" is adding fuel to an already-smoldering fire of resentment over the domination of the current health system by for-profit insurers, in addition to that system's high cost (double any other nation's) and poor performance (37th overall in quality, according to the World Health Organization).


Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, with her partner, Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Both are practicing physicians as well as professors at Harvard Medical School. They have written widely on issues of health care reform, including the book Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate Health Care (with Dr. Ida Hellander). A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Dr. Woolhandler earned her medical degree at the LSU-New Orleans Medical School.

As the debate over American healthcare heats up in anticipation of the 2008 presidential race (in which health reform is widely expected to be one of the central issues), Dr. Woolhandler reflects on the flawed U.S. health system, various reform proposals, and the prospects of enacting a system in the single-payer mold..."