Universal health care?

This is a news headline from today:

Businesses sign on to health care reform, Obama says

In the early 1990s US health care reform was unsuccessfully attempted. Now, however, it appears that it's not just politicians and 'common folk' who want to see health-care-for-all. Also from this same article, "Six major trade associations representing the drug industry, hospitals, insurers, medical device manufacturers, physicians and organized labor have signed on to the cost reduction commitment."

The major players appear to have something at stake. It's almost as if everyone has had an epiphany: spending 17% of our GDP on health care is no longer sustainable and will soon undercut the ability of various organizations and businesses to carry on as normal. Pharmaceutical companies are concerned, for example, because they are seeing that when people cannot afford health care, they simply do not buy the medications that they need. Not good for the patient; not good for the drug companies. Patients who lose insurance are more likely to go to the ER for their care, and when they do seek care it is often more advanced (read: expensive). This is bad for the patient, and for the hospital. And so on and so forth.