Each presidential election season, I hope that health-care reform will be a top issue. While there is hope this year, the storm clouds make me wonder what can be accomplished in the next administration.

Finding resources and will power to move forward given the financial burden of the Bush wars, the credit debacle and the energy crisis make health-care reform, perhaps, moot.

Which candidate has a better plan? The Aug. 21 and Oct. 2 editions of the New England Journal of Medicine reviews their proposals.

They should be required reading for some like columnist Mona Charon, who addressed health-care reform a month ago in the Kennebec Journal. She cites Norway, where you may wait for elective surgery, but not in the U.S.; you may just not have access to any health care.

While Norway ranks 11 in health-care outcome, the U.S. ranks 37, according to the most recent WorldHealth Organization report.

In the industrialized world, the U.S. spends more than twice as much as any comparable nation and insures the fewest people.

The two presidential candidates offer many good ideas but only those of Sen. Barack Obama approach a solution that could insure everyone, focus on prevention and eliminate the costly disincentives of pre-existing illnesses. Little change will occur with Sen. John McCain's plan: high deductibles, no primary care, exclusions for pre-existing illness will remain barriers. Change is needed now, the choice is yours to make.

Dr. John Woytowicz

Gardiner