The Pros & Cons of Universal Care

Jonathan Cohn has an interesting article on the pros and cons of universal care and why some conservative arguments might not be as strong as we think.

I'm squishy about universal care; recent health insurance problems makes me far less keen on the current system than others might be. And watching my father--whose combination of Medicare and military health care--get the same care as other people makes me less afraid of universal care.

I'm not entirely sold. As I've stated before, I grew up a military brat and waited 12 hours for a doctor to tell me to take a Tylenol for strep throat or 5 hours for an x-ray read. I still think those problems will persist in any universal system the U.S. acquires.

Mainly, though, like most people squishy about universal care, I worry about innovation. Would universal care cause innovation to dry up? Cohn thinks not, given that many of the "innovations" pharmaceutical companies have created in the last 10 years are just repackaged versions of their old, expiring patented drugs.

Cohn thinks our greatest asset is the National Institutes of Health, our government behemoth which sponsors a variety of medical researches. I can understand why. There's just not always much incentive in the private sector for making one's product obsolete. Why cure cancer if you can manage it for 40 years and make a profit?

There are, of course, scientists more interested in cures than management. My husband told me last night about some doctors who have been working on a cure for Alzheimer's, and the cure might be available in the next 10 to 20 years. After watching the debilitating effects of the disease on my father (it's difficult to watch him not remember the house he's lived in for 20 years), any hope for a cure is welcome.

I'm not sure universal care will be as rosy as the picture Cohn creates. But, regardless of my skepticism, it seems likely to me we will head in a universal health care direction in the next 10 years or so.