Economy in crisis — and 46 million Americans without health insurance. We ask advisers to Obama and McCain how each would tackle the health-care crisis now.

America’s health care costs are breaking budgets all over, but the tab for pharmaceuticals just keeps rising.
In 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescription drugs. Now it’s more like $200 billion. More than any other country — and yet we don’t live longer than others.
Reporter Melody Petersen asked what’s going on. What she found was [...]

There are issues that get a big workout on the presidential campaign trail: big headlines, big applause lines. And there are a raft of really big issues that barely get touched: from defense spending, to American deficits, to the bottom line of American health care — health care costs.
Other nations spend less and live longer. [...]

When Dr. Jerome Groopman was making his rounds as a young hospital resident, he misdiagnosed a patient’s chest pain. She died.
Now, three decades on, Groopman is one of the country’s most respected and widely-read physicians. He is also a Harvard med school professor and a writer for the New Yorker.
Now he’s writing about how doctors [...]

Hillary Clinton got run over by health care reform politics fourteen years ago. Trounced by drug companies and insurers, by Harry and Louise, by ordinary Americans afraid she would limit their health care choices.
Now, years have passed, nearly 50 million Americans are uninsured, millions more live in fear of losing coverage — and Hillary is [...]