Falling Far Short of Reform

By DAVID LEONHARDT
NYT

WASHINGTON

Reduce the growth of health care costs. Bend the curve. Find the game changers. Reform the delivery system.

Yawn.

Health care reform has always had two main goals. The first — insuring the uninsured — carries grand overtones of social justice. The second — making the health care system more efficient — can seem abstract, technocratic and a bit nerdy.

Just listen to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff. He recently dismissed critics who say the current bills don’t do enough to change health care by referring to them as “the executive board of the Brookings Institution” and “people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute.” The goal, Mr. Emanuel told my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, is to pass a bill through Congress, not to figure out what the ideal bill may look like.

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