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[edit] This

This entire series of articles on health care reform appears to be a series of advocacy papers written from a left-liberal perspective. In particular, the articles about health care reform between the teens and forties, health care reform under Truman, health care reform under Nixon, health care reform under Carter, and health care reform under Clinton are all written from a point of view that clearly favors some sort of national single-payer or modified single-payer system. The author considers setbacks for increased state control of health care "unfortunate" at nearly every juncture.

While they contain valuable historical information, they need to be edited to conform to the NPOV policy. The coverage itself also violates the spirit of the NPOV policy: presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush also proposed major health care system reforms which would emphasize market mechanisms and individual responsibility. They are currently are not covered at all. I have tagged all of them with a NPOV and quality tags. Since it seems clear that one person wrote all these articles--I'm including notes on all the talk pages to discuss the issues here.

Elirl

Anyone who read the history for these pages would quickly see they were not at all written by a single author. This material was posted by members in my Politics of Health Care class taught at Duke University. They use a common template in terms of how the information is "packaged" so that it's relatively to look across these "case studies" and see a common set of questions being addressed. Our focus in class was universal coverage proposals and the "puzzle" we were addressing is why such initiatives repeatedly have been defeated over nearly 100 years of effort given that public opinion polls repeatedly show overwhelming support for the idea of universal coverage. We did not have time in class to look at every administration or every set of proposals that has ever been advanced. Those wishing to post "case studies" of health reform efforts by Bush 41 or Bush 43 are more than welcome to do so.

FWIW, I am very far from being an advocate of single payer: indeed, I presented (to rather considerable ridicule) a paper at the American Political Science Association convention last September a paper titled How the U.S. Achieved Universal Coverage under George W. Bush, outlining a very market-oriented approach to universal coverage entailing an individual mandate coupled with high-deductible consumer-directed health plans. This style of reform has been championed in books published by American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and other market-oriented think tanks or writers, hardly champions of a single payer approach. I continue to believe that if we get universal coverage, it is far more likely to emerge through leadership from a Republican president using a platform that is market-oriented rather than single payer. Moreover, I think one could legitimately view the history of failed efforts to achieve universal coverage and make the case that it was the repeated dogmatic refusal of single payer advocates to compromise on their vision of what universal coverage should look like that has led us into the impasse we face even today.

Thus, if you detect bias in these cases, you can rest assured it was not encouraged by me. On the contrary, I repeatedly made clear that I expected these students fleshing out these cases to stick to reporting on the facts in each case: who did what, when, why and how, etc. as opposed to getting into philosophical discussions of the ethical merits of one approach to universal coverage versus another. I thought that sharing our collective class work on Wikipedia made far more sense than just creating these cases for our own use and thereafter consigned to the dustbin of academia. You may regard our focus on universal coverage as biased in and of itself, but as indicated above, it is the disconnect between repeated expressions of public opinion and our failure to address these that creates the puzzle. Were only 25% of the public in favor of universal coverage, there would be no puzzle to solve and not much interest in cases to help us better understand why this idea keeps failing.

Thus, if you believe there are certain expressions of bias within a given case, then the appropriate corrective is to simply make the requisite edit(s) as opposed to branding the entire page as being biased. I think any even-handed observer would conclude that 95% or more of the content is strictly factual. If occasional expressions of a less-than-neutral point of view crept in, it was not my intent; in the real world, neither my students nor the men's or women's basketball teams are perfect. That said, in my classes, 95% is A work. Armed with more perfect information than s/he may have had when applying the NPOV and quality tags to this work, I would encourage Elirl to consider their removal.

--Conoverc 16:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of changes to this page needed...

The distinction between "health reform" and "health care reform" is very artificial. It would be best to combine the two into a more comprehensive article on both the political processes and the management practices surrounding planning for change in health systems. It should be an international account - the history of health reform in the US has rightly been moved to other pages. 85.210.43.69 01:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)(stuartjcameron).

[edit] Merge

These two articles have mostly different content, but the basic subject is the same. I think they would both be stronger if someone merged the content into a single article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It strikes me that a large portion of the Health care politics article has more in common with the article on Universal health care than it does with this one - for example, the discussion of philosophy and the arguments for and against socialized medicine. Do a word search on "universal health care" in the article - you'll be amazed at how many hits you get. I'd suggest merging it with the universal health care article instead. I don't see that the politics article adds much to the combination of the Universal health care, Health care reform, Health policy analysis and Health economics articles. Perhaps it would help to have a separate "politics" article if it focused more on how different political systems address health care, why they result in different solutions, or how different interest groups engage the issue politically - but that doesn't seem to be the direction it has taken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EastTN (talk • contribs) 19:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

As I have stated in other discussions, I think there's a distinction between articles that are at least making an attempt at a global approach to the issue, and those that are clearly focused on the United States. To me, health care reform is a global issue, and so far the content here reflects an attempt to address it globally. On the other hand, the article on health care politics reflects primarily the debate in the United States. I have suggested elsewhere that the debate in the United States needs to be the subject of its own article, and that the debate sections that focus primarily on these issues in the United States (see the two-column table at the bottom of universal health care and the lengthy section in publicly funded health care should come out of more global articles and be moved to a U.S. specific article. I agree that the health care politics article is a mess as it stands. Perhaps the article could be called "Health care reform in the United States". Any support for that idea? --Sfmammamia (talk) 21:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure - I don't know what the best way is to bring order to all this, but that suggestion sounds reasonable to me.EastTN (talk) 14:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I've just noticed that there's also an article on National health insurance. I can't get my head around how all of these articles fit together: Universal health care; Publicly-funded health care; Single-payer health care; National health insurance; Socialized medicine; and Social health insurance (what am I missing?). I know there are real conceptual distinctions between at least some of these, and different people use these terms in different contexts, but what we've got right now is terribly confusing. It would really help if someone could come up with a reasonable taxonomy for these different terms and build at least a short umbrella article that would set some context for how to distinguish between them, and bring together links to all of them in a way that would help readers understand how they relate to each other.EastTN (talk) 20:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

If we were to do this - rename the health care politics article "Health care reform in the United States" - which sections would we pull out of the other articles to populate it? The "Debate in the United States" section of Universal health care; the "Debate" section of Publicly-funded health care; the "Proponents and intent," "Opponents and criticisms," "Polls," and "State proposals" sections of Single-payer health care; the "2008 U.S. Presidential election" section of Socialized medicine? Anything else?EastTN (talk) 18:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would support the creation of an article "Health care reform in the United States". It is clear that there is going to be reform and it would indeed be very helpful keep all the arguments and issues about reform in the U.S. in an article that is specific to that country. We should then try to eliminate all the U.S. centric arguments about health care funding, regulation etc.. from the general sections in articles such as Universal health Care, Health Insurance, socialized medicine and publicly-funded health care and keep these in specific sections dedicated to that country. These latter articles are global in nature and should not be dominated all the time by US political arguments. I don't agree with the idea that "health care reform is a global issue" expressed above. No country has a static health care system and reform is ongoing but different countries will have different issues and different start points. Thus what works for one country may not work for another and reform can be heading in different directions in different countries.Thus we should have articles describing various types of systems around the world and the pros and cons of each. But the big issue of reform in the U.S. should be in a U.S. specific article.--Tom (talk) 08:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a first stab at creating a Health care reform in the United States article. I've tried to pull together all the material we've discussed, and done a very rudimentary job of weaving it together. I have not attempted to remove the material from other articles, nor to add links to the new article. Please take a look to see if all the appropriate material has been moved into it. If so, perhaps we can start cleaning up the other articles a bit.EastTN (talk) 20:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My reversion of the article to last version by Prowler08 (undoing edits by LincolnSt)

A whole series of edits were made to this article transforming it out of all recognition. It used to contain a lot of very useful and informative but following the edits of mostly one editor the article was completely devoid of useful information on the subject.

I have therefore reverted the article back to its original state. If the article is to undergo radical alteration the matter should be discussed here first. --Hauskalainen (talk) 07:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Many of the links added in the versions of LincolSt had no reference to reform in them at all. I am inclined to the conclusion that the edits were inspired by a motive to keep any real information about health care reform out of Wikipedia! And because of WP policy to assume good faith I do not make such a statement lightly. --Hauskalainen ([[07:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that major changes should be discussed in Talk first. LincolnSt is entitled to be WP:BOLD and make drastic changes. Other editors are entitled to be WP:BOLD and revert them. If you want the changes to stay, best to get consensus.

Please give me a short statement of what those changes were intended to accomplish and why the article is better that way. Nbauman (talk) 08:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoa guys, I'm on your side. I only restored the old See also links that LincolnSt deleted. I wasn't adding them. You need to take a closer look at the edit history. Also, please change the title of this section and remove my user name, as I didn't do what you claimed. --Cosmic Cowboy (talk) 08:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Re comments left at talk.. Sorry Cosmic... you are right. I got confused in my checking back. I've put the thing back to the way it was on this talk page. I edited also Nbauman's comment to remove your name. I trust that he will appreciate that I do this in good faith (I'm sure he was just following my lead).--Hauskalainen (talk) 09:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and by the way, I'm Prowler08. I got logged out and can't remember my password, and I had not put an email address on my account to retrieve it. --Cosmic Cowboy (talk) 09:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion proposal

Oppose I can only guess that this idea has occured to the proposer because I placed a similar deletion proposal at Health care systems which does anything but discuss health care systems. As such the current proposal to delete Healthcare reform seems more like childish tit-for-tat than serious editorial work. I won't bother giving further reasons. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Oppose This article has useful information. The proposed Merge into Health care systems section "reform" would make the Health care systems article too big. Editing it would delete valuable information. Nbauman (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Support The only content in this article is duplication of three articles. Health care systems article won't be "too big" after merge. After replacing content forking with links to main articles, the only thing left is this.LincolnSt (talk) 19:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed prod Healthcare reform is a very legitimate article that should be expanded. Any major problems with the article have been the result of the prod's nominator, LincolnSt, making drastic changes to the page without seeking consensus. --Cosmic Cowboy (talk) 20:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You did not deny that this is a content fork of Health care reform in the United States and few others. What "drastic changes"? These are the only changes done by me (unreferenced templates). Please don't remove the template before it has expired.LincolnSt (talk) 21:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Please read the text of the template carefully: it says "You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason." Since there are two opposes above, please use another process for deletion (RfD) if you wish, but I am removing this template as per the template's instructions.--Gregalton (talk) 22:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I deny that the articles are wp:content fork: "Articles should not be split into multiple articles just so each can advocate a different stance on the subject." How are the different articles taking different stances? Nbauman (talk) 22:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Belien

The "Elsewhere" section has the term "Belien" in parentheses several times ("Belien 87", etc.). There is no explanation for this in the entire article, as far as I can tell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.89.14.188 (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] United States - add history and the main drivers of current reform efforts. Cut repetitions

In my opinion, the U.S. section focuses too much on current reforms and says little or nothing about previous reforms. The reason may be because this article used to contain information about health care reform in the United States before that article was created (see earlier discussion in this discussion page).

It should begin with a brief summary of the main health care reform actions (Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA). Then the article should mention the main problems driving current reform proposals such as coverage (15% of population uninsured, employment linkage), insurance company behaviors (recissions, applicant pre-screening, high overheads), the high cost of care from providers and the reasons for it (e.e. fee-for-service rewarding quantity not quality, profit motive, defensive medicine). Beyond this the reader should refer to the main article Health care in the United States for more information. When adding the history which explains the current section we should also aim to cut the repetitious elements already in the section (e.g. on costs such as % of GDP/World/OECD etc). My preference would be for the efforts of individual states to be discussed only in the main article. The main thrust should be to provide the reader with sufficient wikilinks to get more information if the reader needs it and not to overwhelm the reader with all the arguments and references in this article. Does this seem reasonable?--Hauskalainen (talk) 10:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I will take silence on this matter as being that this is a non-controversial proposal.--Hauskalainen (talk) 08:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

==United States General strike called for Monday November 16th, 2009 -

There are rumors of a general strike circulating over the internet. Can anyone confirm these? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.109.195.126 (talk) 19:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

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