New Republic Releases Special Issue On Health Care

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 15 Nov 2007 - 10:00 PDT

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As part of a New Republic special issue on health care, Jonathan Cohn examined whether universal health care "would lead to both less innovation and less access to the innovation that already exists." According to Cohn, in a universal health system, the government "would seek to limit spending by forcing down payments to doctors and pharmaceutical companies, while scrutinizing treatments for cost-effectiveness."

Although conservatives claim that universal health care "would necessarily lead to inferior treatments," ultimately, "whether innovation would continue to thrive under universal health care depends entirely on what kind of system we create and how well we run it," Cohn writes, adding, "In fact, it's quite possible that universal coverage could lead to better innovation."

NIH, which in 2006 spent more than $28 billion on research, is "probably the primary explanation for why so many of the intellectual breakthroughs in medical science happen here," but its separate funding means that there is "no reason why" the agency could not continue to fund research under a universal health care system, according to Cohn.

The "ideal" for a universal health care system would "be to come up with some way of achieving the best of both worlds -- paying for innovation when it yields actual benefits, but without neglecting less glitzy, potentially more beneficial forms of health care," which is "precisely what the leading proposals for universal health care seek to do," Cohn writes. He concludes, "You don't have to choose between universal access and innovation: It's possible to have both -- as long as you do it right" (Cohn, New Republic, 11/12).

Other Articles
Headlines appear below of other articles appearing in the New Republic special issue on health care.

• "They're Out There" (New Republic, 11/12).
  
  
• "Foreign Bodies: The Uninsured Even the Democrats Won't Help" (Crair, New Republic, 11/12).
  
  
• "Big Trouble: Medicine's Deadly Bias Against the Obese" (Zengerle, New Republic, 11/12).
  
  
• "The Questions Cure" (Rothman, New Republic, 11/12).

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