Obama Health Care Plan

Sen. Barack Obama spelled out his plan to provide all Americans with health insurance at the U of I Hospitals and Clinics (the largest teaching hospital in the Western Hemiphere! -- John Deeth)this week. Plan is here:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/HealthPlanOverview.pdf
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/HealthPlanFull.pdf

I've got and looked at John Edwards' DVD. (What, you didn't get one? You're the only Iowan who didn't.) It's okay. In a perfect world where scrapping the current private system and starting from scratch would be politically possible short of bloody revolution, I'd be all for it.

The thing that strikes me about Obama's plan is that it seems doable, politically and economically. A reform here, a new program there and pretty soon you are looking at universal coverage. And that has to be the first goal of health care reform, to get everyone insurance. That one step will reduce everyone's costs substantially (even those who remain in private plans) because it will take billions of dollars of costs in uncompensated care for the uninsured off the backs of everyone else.

Once we get that stabilized a bit, then we can tackle the really thorny issues of allocation of resources, who gets what level of care, and how soon, etc. But Job One has to be getting everyone covered in a meaningful way.