Gary Rubinstein has played with an analogy. What if Congress and the Administration and the governors became alarmed about life expectancy rates?
What if they decided that we need a serious dose of med reform?
What if they followed the same principles as school reform?
What if these policymakers knew as little about medicine as they know about education?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OBAMACARE??
And we want politicians to listen to teachers just like they wanted us to listen to doctors when it came to this healthcare bill.
No Cover Left On Your Behind
&
Race To The Toilet
Sadly, Obamacare was the best we could come up with in this country ruled by economic royalists and with a crazed rightwingnut party opposing everything. We should have Medicare for all or single payer. Funny, they don’t call Medicare LBJCare or Johnsoncare? Every other industrialized democracy has some form or version of universal health care from Israel to New Zealand. Everyone’s covered and no one goes bankrupt from medical costs. Truman proposed a national health care system in 1947 but it was knocked down by the GOP and the AMA. Sorry for being so off topic.
There’s no need to get hung up on the name. It is just an easy way of referencing the person who drafted or championed the legislation. You have HillaryCare, RomneyCare, and now ObamaCare.
Not that off topic, those systems function so well in part because it is possible to have enlightened federal oversight. It is generally politicians (who are informed by doctor’s viewpoints) who make system wide decisions about how to effectively manage the national funding allocations for public health. And with nationalized dollars there needs to be nationalized accountability. Because while the free market is no way to run a hospital or a school, you do need effective, semi-objective performance review to justify continued funding.
I think those countries can afford those national healthcare systems because the United States is acting as their surrogate military. They don’t spend as much on the military as we do. Think about all those treaties Ron Paul always talks about.
from a forum I read yesterday, there was a comment by a doctor (unsubstantiated) that explained how PPACA will actually treat doctors much like teachers are being treated. He explained that they will be ‘graded’ on the patient outcomes. For example, if a doctor treats 10 diabetics with the same standard protocol but lets say that 4 of them don’t follow the doctors instructions and are later require more care or are hospitalized for a diabetic-related condition, that will count against the doctor’s rating. It does not matter that it was the patient’s fault for not doing what the doctor said. Does that sound familiar? I don’t know if its true or not, but there are many things that PPACA does to medical professionals that we don’t even know about yet. It appears that over the next few years we will all be finding out how it really works.
Republicans wanted the Democrats to listen to doctors when it came to the healthcare bill, soldiers on the ground when it came to the Iraq and Afghanistan surges, and small-business owners when it came to the economy. How about Republicans listen to teachers when they purport new education policy?