Two Kinds of Health Reformers

Brad Warthen says this well:

We continue to concentrate on the wrong thing -- getting the uninsured into the present system -- when we talk about health care reform.

Increasingly, those of us who are privileged to be in the system find that we can't afford health care, either. The whole system is rotten, wasteful, too expensive and too inefficient. We pay more money to be sicker than folks in any other advanced nation.

There are a lot of problems with our system, but the biggest is the basic premise -- employer-based health care through for-profit (and we're talking for HUGE profits) private insurance companies.

If private health care coverage weren't so expensive for all of us, the 1 in 7 who remain uncovered would be in it. But it is, and will be, expensive by definition. A profit has to be made.

A single-payer system is the logical way to go.

So what kind of health reformer are you? The kind who is trying to get the uninsured into the system, or the kind that is trying to change the system? Mother Teresa or Archbishop Romero? Charity or justice?