The potential impact of the World Trade Organization's general agreement on trade in services on health system reform and regulation in the United States.

The collapse of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Round of talks without achieving new health services liberalization presents an important opportunity to evaluate the wisdom of granting further concessions to international investors in the health sector. The continuing deterioration of the U.S. health system and the primacy of reform as an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign make clear the need for a full range of policy options for addressing the national health crisis. Yet few commentators or policymakers realize that existing WTO health care commitments may already significantly constrain domestic policy options. This article illustrates these constraints through an evaluation of the potential effects of current WTO law and jurisprudence on the implementation of a single-payer national health insurance system in the United States, proposed incremental national and state health system reforms, the privatization of Medicare, and other prominent health system issues. The author concludes with some recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative to suspend existing liberalization commitments in the health sector and to interpret current and future international trade treaties in a manner consistent with civilized notions of health care as a universal human right.

Health care reform hinges on private-sector collaboration.

America's health care system is characterized by rising costs, increasing numbers of Americans who lack health insurance coverage, and poor quality of health care delivery. The convergence of these factors is adversely affecting not only the health of Americans but also the ability of businesses to compete successfully in a global marketplace. AARP and other nonprofit organizations are collaborating with the private sector to have more people covered by health insurance and to educate them to make behavioral choices that prevent chronic disease and ultimately lower costs.

Obama health care for all Americans: practical implications.

Rapidly rising health care costs over the decades have prompted the application of business practices to medicine with goals of improving the efficiency, restraining expenses, and increasing quality. Average health insurance premiums and individual contributions for family coverage have increased approximately 120% from 1999 to 2008. Health care spending in the United States is stated to exceed 4 times the national defense, despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. health care system has been blamed for inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, inappropriate waste, and fraud and abuse. While many people lack health insurance, others who do have health insurance allegedly receive care ranging from superb to inexcusable. In criticism of health care in the United States and the focus on savings, methodologists, policy makers, and the public in general seem to ignore the major disadvantages of other global health care systems and the previous experiences of the United States to reform health care. Health care reform is back with the Obama administration with great expectations. It is also believed that for the first time since 1993, momentum is building for policies that would move the United States towards universal health insurance. President Obama has made health care a central part of his domestic agenda, with spending and investments in Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and proposed 2010 budget. It is the consensus now that since we have a fiscal emergency, Washington is willing to deal with the health care crisis. Many of the groups long opposed to reform, appear to be coming together to accept a major health care reform. Reducing costs is always at the center of any health care debate in the United States. These have been focused on waste, fraud, and abuse; administrative costs; improving the quality with health technology information dissemination; and excessive regulations on the health care industry in the United States. Down payment on health care reform, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and CHIP include many provisions to reach towards universal health care.

A universal healthcare system: is it right for the United States?

UNLABELLED: The over 45 million Americans who are uninsured speak volumes about the problems with our present healthcare system. Many Americans do not have access to basic health care and it is time to revisit the importance of universal health care for all Americans. PURPOSE: To gain a greater understanding of the facts, figures, and support for universal health care in America. SOURCE OF INFORMATION: A literature review of five research studies. CONCLUSION: The implementation of universal health care in America is a plausible feat, but the support of several facets of society is necessary for this to become a reality.

Proposal of the Physicians' Working Group for Single-Payer National Health Insurance.

The United States spends more than twice as much on health care as the average of other developed nations, all of which boast universal coverage. Yet more than 41 million Americans have no health insurance. Many more are underinsured. Confronted by the rising costs and capabilities of modern medicine, other nations have chosen national health insurance (NHI). The United States alone treats health care as a commodity distributed according to the ability to pay, rather than as a social service to be distributed according to medical need. In this market-driven system, insurers and providers compete not so much by increasing quality or lowering costs, but by avoiding unprofitable patients and shifting costs back to patients or to other payers. This creates the paradox of a health care system based on avoiding the sick. It generates huge administrative costs that, along with profits, divert resources from clinical care to the demands of business. In addition, burgeoning satellite businesses, such as consulting firms and marketing companies, consume an increasing fraction of the health care dollar. We endorse a fundamental change in US health care--the creation of an NHI program. Such a program, which in essence would be an expanded and improved version of traditional Medicare, would cover every American for all necessary medical care. An NHI program would save at least 200 billion dollars annually (more than enough to cover all of the uninsured) by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private, investor-owned insurance industry and reducing spending for marketing and other satellite services. Physicians and hospitals would be freed from the concomitant burdens and expenses of paperwork created by having to deal with multiple insurers with different rules, often designed to avoid payment. National health insurance would make it possible to set and enforce overall spending limits for the health care system, slowing cost growth over the long run. An NHI program is the only affordable option for universal, comprehensive coverage.

Rekindling reform: principles and goals.

Members of the Rekindling Reform Steering Committee collaborated over a period of several months in early 2002 to develop a set of principles and goals to help guide and define the group's efforts for comprehensive health care reform in the United States. The next step is to circulate this document to the sponsoring organizations for their approval. This document is, then, a work in progress, subject to revision as the process of discussion and review continues. These principles provide a sense of the lessons members of the Rekindling Reform Steering Committee have learned from their study of other countries' universal health care systems, and how those lessons have informed their thinking about the nature of the health care reform needed in United States.

Tying a knot in the unraveling health care safety net.

The U.S. health care system continues to rely on a diverse and poorly organized health care safety net to provide care for its uninsured and underinsured residents. Last year, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report entitled America's Health Care Safety Net: Intact but Endangered. The IOM cited several threats to the safety net, including inadequate monitoring of safety net function, poor integration of services, financial threats for core safety net providers, and the destabilizing effects of a rapid shift from traditional Medicaid to Medicaid managed care products. This paper reviews the findings of the IOM report, highlighting the key issues for emergency medicine. In response to the IOM's challenges, emergency departments should be used more effectively to monitor local safety net viability and to enhance the integration of community health care safety net delivery systems.