OTHER VOICES

“Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don’t get a handle on rising healthcare costs, the answer to that more important question is an emphatic ‘no.’ And that’s what makes last week’s announcement by physicians representing nine medical specialties so welcome. The physicians have identified 45 specific medical tests and procedures ... which they think are either overused or misused. They are either unnecessary, lacking benefits to patients or ... even harmful.” —Sacramento Bee

(Calif.) “What critics like to call Obamacare will either be the routine way Americans get health coverage or a historical footnote, and the war against it will be largely forgotten, along with its often silly, over-the-top claims about non-existent ‘death panels,’ a government ‘takeover’ of healthcare and—right now—a battle against an obscure Medicare costcutting board that critics say would neuter Congress and foist rationing or worse on the nation’s elderly … The reason it engenders such heated opposition is that like the ‘death panels,’ it’s a convenient vehicle for scaring people into opposing health reform—facts to the contrary.”

—USA Today According to a Modern Healthcare online poll, more than 80% of respondents expect the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down parts of the healthcare reform law or the

entire law when the justices rule in June.