International Inspiration
NPR listening can be really expensive.
We’re just minding our own business, driving home from our weekend away, and catch today’s episode of Fresh Air, in which Terry Gross spends the hour talking to author and journalist T.R. Reid about his book The Healing of America.
The book discusses Reid’s research and investigations into the various health care systems throughout the world, and how America might learn from them in order to improve its health care system so it might be more effective, more equitable, and less expensive. And, incidentally, pull America out of the unenviable position of being the only major industrialized democracy on the planet that doesn’t consider health care a basic human right for it’s citizens.
Listen to the show at the link above; you’ll most certainly learn something; it’s opened a few more interesting options in my personal search for what I think might be the best way for us to fix things; there are a couple of models out there that work wonderfully, and, in what might be considered a salve for the chapped asses of certain conservative types, not government run. No other country, however, seems to let it’s private insurance companies run on a profit-seeking basis such as we have here, which leads to companies denying care in order to avoid payouts and increase executive compensation.
Anyway, as for why NPR is expensive: This particular show led to me adding perhaps the fifteenth book/cd/movie/etc to the list of things I needed to run out and purchase this year, as well as my yearly membership to my local station.
And, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
