Another snippet from Medscape

Providing Health Insurance for All (free with registration), an opinion piece on Massachusetts' attempt to require health insurance for all citizens of the Commonwealth. It's a little like auto insurance, where states require a certain minimum coverage to drive, but more importantly, it's based on the idea that individuals, employers, and the state share responsibility for health care, and that at the same time, insurance should be affordable. That model has been used by the Commonwealth of Kentucky to help bring insurance to children, by making insurance for children affordable regardless of prexisting conditions, and providing a state programme called KCHIP to help.

We've also seen expansion of coverage in Medicare to include prescription medicines, where different plans cover different drugs and different levels of cost, but for those under a certain income, the government is helping with what otherwise would be prohibitive premiums or copays. I think that's certainly a move in the right direction. Limited income should not mean limited access to health care. For those not eligible for Medicare, pharmaceutical companies also still provide their assistance programmes. Health care agencies continue to work on solutions for providing care to the uninsured. We need to look at this nationally and continue to seek strategies to keep health care costs down and prevent any one agency or group from being burdened by those costs, and most importantly, prevent any idividual from dying or having other adverse health impact from a lack of a solution.