It might just make you sick to follow the money trails behind the Gore and Bush healthcare proposals in this presidential campaign. If the plans themselves don’t make you dizzy enough, understanding who’s buying whom, to say what, will leave your head spinning. The United States spends vastly more on healthcare than any other country, and still our healthcare system ranks 15th in the world behind France, Canada, and the UK for overall effectiveness.
If all the money isn’t helping patients, who *does* it benefit? It turns out that those drug companies, HMOs, and doctors doing well in American medicine are all bringing their influence to bear on this partisan debate. The top 15 pharmaceutical companies alone spent 60 million dollars last year on lobbying, advertising, studies, and non-profit fronts that advance their views. We’re decoding the healthcare debate in Campaign 2000 this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Laurie Garrett, science writer for “Newsday” and author of “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health” and Ted Marmor, professor of public policy at the Yale School of Management and author of “The Politics of Medicare”