Romanow versus Kirby: resolving the differences

Abstract

In their paper on the Romanow and Kirby reports, Chodos and MacLeod make an impassioned attempt to bridge the divide between two landmark reports that are often painted as polar opposites on the private/public aspect of healthcare delivery. Their attempt to reconcile the differences and achieve "a degree of consensus" is well worthwhile, and the resulting discussion informative. But in the end, can the differences really be reduced to semantics that can be bridged with a little common sense, or do they represent two fundamentally different views of how things work?