Sometime in the next four years, the health care delivery system in the United States is going to change. That's a given because the current patchwork--costly and unreliable private health insurance, overcrowded and underfunded hospital emergency rooms, technophilic and procedure-incentivized physicians--is coming apart at the seams. Whatever solution the 44th president and the 111th Congress enact may or may not prove adequate. But rest assured they'll change something.

What that means for you, reader, is you need to set aside a little time between now and Nov. 4 to catch up on the American health care policy debate (assuming you haven't already done so). Your future health may depend on it...

...Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, by Phillip Longman, makes the counterintuitive but wholly persuasive case that the Veterans Administration, in spite of its recent difficulties serving Iraq war veterans, provides an extremely successful model for socialized medicine. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction.) Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, by Shannon Brownlee, explains why those patients who do have access to treatment receive it to excess, to the detriment of their own health. Brownlee and Longman are both fellows at the New America Foundation. A principal reason for overtreatment is that doctors are usually unsalaried professionals who get paid based on the number of procedures they perform and tests they order up... LINK