Obviously the most important item in how we should be judging any health care reforms. Back during the Cold War, RR clarified a lot of muddled thinking by pointing out that the walls erected by communists were always to keep their own people from leaving. You don't have a whole lot of emigration from Florida to Cuba, do we? Same goes for health care. When people need quality treatment, they come here to the U.S. I haven't studied it in depth, but as I understand it the stats that say our healthcare results are bad are skewed by higher traffic fatalities and violent crime -- problems that don't reflect on the healthcare system. The stats seem to support that, if you're sick, your prospects for recovery and longevity are among the very highest in the U.S.
Our healthcare system has all sorts of problems, but we should certainly have a "do no harm" mentality when it comes to reforms -- we have to avoid creating bad incentives (as in other countries, where medicine becomes an undesirable profession, and investment in R&D and new medical technologies lags behind).
