'Long Time Coming': Are We on the Brink of Universal Health Care Coverage?(Editorial‪)‬

The financial meltdown and bailout of September-October 2008 have shocked everyone. The headlines tell it all: "Wall Street, R. I. P. (Creswell & White, 2008), "Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion so far" (J. H. Davis, 2008), "Greenspan's free-market faith shaken" (Irwin & Paley, 2008). Bernstein (2008), a well-known investment adviser and historian, described the bailout as an "earth-shaking blow to the most basic principle of our economic system," namely, faith in "individual decision-making in free markets" (p. 8). Despite the severity of this crisis, we should not allow it to deflect attention from the ongoing meltdown of our health care system (http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=getdocument &doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050208). In recent months, several studies and reports have examined the dimensions of this crisis: