Description: This paper offers basic, economic and actuarial ideas to improve the balance of cost, access to treatment and quality over time.

Description: Essay offers a vision of health care where everyone is covered, everyone is eligible, receives fair pricing, receives vital information and is taxed the same.

Description: The editors of Health Watch have made health care reform the focus of the Sepctember 2009 issue, and provide an introduction to the issue's contents.

Description: A proposal to reform current health care market, from a 'preferred payer' system, in which Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the true cost while others must then pay more, to a 'value for money' system. This would be achieved by requiring providers to bill all patients the same rate for the same services, with a standard bundling format to make all providers' rate differences transparent. Differences between billed charges and what Medicare pays would be made up by the Medicare patient, rather than subsidized by those outside of Medicare.