The U.S. healthcare scandal

Jesse Jackson writes:

The U.S. health care system is an open scandal. We devote far more of our national income to health care than any other industrial nation. Yet we get worse results -- higher child mortality, higher deaths from breast cancer, less prevention and more expense. If you have wealth, the best medicine in the world is available to you. If you are poor, or increasingly a middle- or low-income family, too often you will lack insurance or be vastly underinsured. You will forgo costly tests and let illnesses fester until they become debilitating.

This is getting worse, not better. More and more small businesses simply don't offer health care for their employees. More and more large ones are imitating Wal-Mart and moving to part-time employees, who can't afford what plan is offered. They count on Medicaid to provide some coverage for their workers. We pay the highest drug prices in the world, even though the U.S. government pays for much of the research that develops the drugs.