Health care for everyone?

The Boston Review has published a forum on American health care reform, with excellent contributions by Jill Quadagno, John Geyman and Barbara Starfield, but the most provocative essay in the forum may be the one authored by Victor Fuchs and Ezekiel Emanuel, titled "Getting Covered." Fuchs and Emanuel argue that the most politically realistic plan for getting adequate health care for all Americans is not a single payer system, but a system of universal health care vouchers. They argue that a voucher system will be easier to reconcile with the American individualism that has doomed all previous efforts at universal coverage. Fuch and Emanuel write, "We can each push our favorite plan and have universal health care fail yet again. Or we can compromise and get all Americans covered."