Readings

There are lots of people these days who claim to have a simple solution to reform the health-care system. Liberals who can't quite embrace the idea of national health insurance now favor extending the program for federal government employees to the whole country. And conservatives are gaga over consumer-driven health care. In The Cure (Encounter Books), David Gratzer, a Canadian psychiatrist and fellow at the libertarian Manhattan Institute, does an artful job of concisely laying out what ails the U.S. system and how things got to be that way. And his prescriptions for fixing it are not only well-reasoned, but also have the political benefit of drawing strands from both liberal and conservative plans. What's ironic is that what he ends up with is a simpler, stripped-down, high-deductible version of the old Clinton health plan for "managed competition," with a dose of tax reform thrown in. It may not be where the political discussion ends up on health care, but this accessible book is not a bad place to start.

-- S.P.