One Healthy Competition
Here's an irony for you: The health-care bills in Congress are getting better even as support for them diminishes around the country. It is just as well that President Obama has yielded to common sense and backed off his demand for quick action. It will take time for voters to become more comfortable with the changes he wants to make....

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is a prestigious part of the private National Academies, which provide independent, expert advice on scientific issues. For the past several years, it has conducted a series of workshops and issued a number of reports on "The Health Care Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes," under the chairmanship of Denis Cortese, president of the Mayo Clinic.

 Washington Post by David Broder, 8/2/2009

Forum: Health care system is not terminally ill
If our system is in such bad shape, why do so many patients from around the world come here for treatment?

Forty years ago, in South Vietnam's delta region, I was a military policeman checking the nighttime perimeter of a U.S. Army medevac hospital. I discovered a badly injured South Vietnamese soldier who had crawled 100 yards to the hospital's sandbagged perimeter. An interpreter arrived to inform me that the wounded soldier was seeking medical aid. I asked, "Why doesn't he go to the Vietnamese Army hospital 100 yards from here." Because, said the interpreter, "That is where he is crawling from!"...Last year, Minnesota's Mayo Clinic alone served more than 8,000 foreign patients.

Star Tribune by Terry Larkin, 8/2/2009

Additional Mayo Clinic Health Care Reform coverage:
Jamestown Post Journal
The Baltimore Sun
Herald-Zeitung
Kennebec Journal
The Age

Tags: Health Policy, Health Policy