In response to an invitation from the Obama Presidential Transition Team, several SAGE members met on Tues, 23 Dec for the purpose of considering health care issues and recommendations for comprehensive health care.
Participants were Lila Geller, Wilma Helms, Ellis Katz, Don Simons, Florence Paul and Sam Sokolow.
At the close of the meeting, several conclusions were agreed upon:
- All agreed that a National Health Care Program, which provides universal care, is greatly needed.
- To accommodate the needs and hard resource limits, all agreed that Means Testing should be part of the program…even though we, the members of the group acknowledge that our personal costs would increase.
- Some believe that Prioritization is also needed…although all agreed that establishing the criteria and ranking would be extremely difficult.. All agreed that there is a kind of prioritization that goes on currently on case-by-case levels, and that some way of systemizing the process on a national scale might be an improvement
As of 11 May 09, the White House has posted a site on this subject (http://www.healthreform.gov/index.html) with photos of Discussion Forums from around the country (http://www.healthreform.gov/slideshow.html), including our own.
On 12 June, WorldFocus (KCLS/PBS) carried a segment concerned with the U.S. Health Care Crisis. The centerpiece of that particular segment was a video which was concerned with the positives and negatives of the Canadian Health Care System…in contrast to the U.S. system.