Friday healthcare links

Have been piling up a bunch of compelling stuff over the last week or two, but apparently not getting together the umph to blog it. So here is the healthcare heap:

• An op ed by Gawande and others talks about critical steps to better healthcare, focusing on how to make the actual medical system work better (and cheaper) rather than on the insurance end. THis will surely be the next step for healthcare reform (as Masschusetts is already facing), so it's good to see the experts exploring real possibilities.
  
  
• Might Democratic legislators have realized that there can be no true bipartisan approach to this issue? The GOP is pushing for concessions but virtually promising that it will still vote against the bill -- if so, let's get something decent on the table and do it without them!!!
  
  
• In a similar vein, Robert Reich boggles at the seeming power of the Gang of Six to decide the fate of this effort in the Senate. Let's not leave it to them -- we all have a stake here!
  
  
• George Lakoff bemoans the failures of the Obama publicity machine -- that is, he notes that healthcare reform really needed to be sold to the American people, using all the framing and persuasion tools at hand, rather than trusting to dry policy arguments and letting the opposition set all the terms of the media discussion. Perhaps not too late, so I hope somebody in power reads his thoughts on this!

I hope that we're going to see some serious movement on all this next week, especially from the Democrats. Maybe that recent show of progressive spine can get a little momentum going!