{"id":870,"date":"2007-09-06T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T14:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=870"},"modified":"2007-09-06T10:52:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T14:52:00","slug":"robert-e-litan-forbes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Robert E. Litan &#8211; Forbes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/opinions\/2007\/08\/26\/solutions-healthcare-litan-oped-cx_rel_0904litan.html\">How to fix healthcare&#8230;<\/a>Mr. Litan describes how private health insurance is stifling American business and the lays out his remedy: adjusting the tax treatment of private health insurance.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>I am sure this would help literally thousands of already well-insured people, so, &#8220;Hear, hear!&#8221;. Snark.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>It reminded me of an old Monty Python sketch called &#8220;How To Do It!&#8221;, in which the presenters breathlessly make their pitch:<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to become a gynaecologist. And this week on &#8216;How to do it&#8217; we&#8217;re going to show you how to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, but first, here&#8217;s Jackie to tell you all how to rid the world of all known diseases.<br \/>Jackie: Hello, Alan.<br \/>Alan: Hello, Jackie.<br \/>Jackie: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure<br \/>for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take<br \/>notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get<br \/>everything right so there&#8217;ll never be any diseases ever again.<br \/>Alan: Thanks,<br \/>Jackie. Great idea. How to play the flute. (picking up a flute) Well here we<br \/>are. You blow there and you move your fingers up and down here. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/em><br \/><em>It is so tiresome to keep hearing these inane ideas about tinkering at the edges of such a profoundly dysfunctional system.<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>Cheers,<br \/><\/em><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/opinions\/2007\/08\/26\/solutions-healthcare-litan-oped-cx_rel_0904litan.html\">read more<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/health\/Robert_E_Litan_Forbes_com\">digg story<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to fix healthcare&#8230;Mr. Litan describes how private health insurance is stifling American business and the lays out his remedy: adjusting the tax treatment of private health insurance.I am sure &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=870\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Robert E. Litan &#8211; Forbes.com&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-insurance-cost","category-private-health-insurance"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}