The Policy Verdict I

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/opinion/brooks-the-policy-verdict-i.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:59 AM
Subject: re: The Policy Verdict I
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  If you require a columnist to submit enough words, over time he'll write just about anything, if only as filler. And so David Brooks comes to "replace the fee-for-service system" for healthcare. Nothing else in his column points in this direction. In his hands, it's an empty buzz-phrase to make Paul Ryan's intellectually bankrupt voucher system seem somehow hip. But it is the core of the conversation America needs to have. As long as physicians are "paid to stick in more tubes" we will go on prolonging dying rather than extending life and our healthcare costs will inexorably grow until they consume our entire economy.

Barry Haskell Levine