Quotes from T.R. Reid

Go to Part IV of Schedule I to figure line 52 if the estate or trust has qualified dividends or has a gain on lines 18a and 19 of column (2) of Schedule D (Form 1041) (as refigured for the AMT, if necessary).

In America, drug companies and medical device makers argue that they have to charge high prices to fund their research and development. But Japanese experience shows that tough cost controls tend to drive innovation, not stifle it.

Over time, Jack came to realize that if he approached a problem correctly, worked at it long enough, and refused to let initial failures get him down, he could find a solution. One

The widest definition of "wealthy" is in India, where a 1% wealth tax kicks in for anybody whose net worth is more than 3 million rupees, which comes to about $45,000. (In India, that still means a small percentage of the population.)

Beveridge] was a driven man, right to the end; his last words, enunciated clearly from his death bed at the age of eighty-four, showed that the aging social reformer was still haunted by the memory of those sick men on the East London streets. 'I have a thousand things to do,' he said, and died.

By the mid-1980s, the tax code allowed depletion or depreciation allowances that cut taxes for cement companies, Christmas tree farms, apple orchards, gravel pits, railroad cars, rubber importers, cattle growers, and many, many more. There was even a depreciation allowance for human beings; professional sports teams were allowed to write off their players as "depreciable assets" as they slowed down with age.

Switzerland, and the Netherlands, any resident can choose any insurance plan on the market—and change to a new plan on short notice. That's a wider choice of health insurance than any American has.

What had been the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 became the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, which it still is today.

Most of them ran counter to the ethos of BBLR. Virtually all of them made the tax code more complicated—including that bizarre "anti-complexity clause," Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX). Three decades after the passage of the 1986 reforms, the U.S. tax code is a mockery of the BBLR principle.

We've wasted our shining medical assets because of a health care payment system—or, more precisely, a crazy quilt of several overlapping and often conflicting systems—that prevents millions from receiving the treatment they need and that undermines the quality of care for millions more.

By routing its manufacturing through a tiny factory in Puerto Rico, Microsoft saved over $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the United States" over a three-year period.

The shortcomings of our system can be grouped into three basic problems: coverage, quality, and cost.

IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, a voluminous and hugely complex new law, which included the laughable "anti-complexity clause"—that is, Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX).

But out of twenty-three wealthy countries, the American health care system ranks dead last when it comes to keeping newborns alive.

the number one most serious problem facing American taxpayers. That problem is the complexity of the tax code.

The Universal Laws of Health Care Systems: 1. "No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it" 2. "No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitas will argue that it is not enough" 3. "The last reform always failed

A lot of what we "know" about other nations' approach to health care is simply myth.

For the mass prevention of disease, mass education is a key weapon.

One reason (though not the main one) is that American health care "providers"—doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug companies—make more money for what they do than their counterparts overseas do.

When Americans fill a prescription, the price is routinely twice as much—sometimes ten times as much—as a Briton or a German would pay for precisely the same pills made in the same factory.

Because the NHS budget covers everybody, the money saved on one patient can be used to treat another. Declining to operate on a sick grandmother means there is more money available to treat sick children. Accordingly, protests about denied coverage tend to be muted. In the U.S. system, that trade-off doesn't apply; if an American insurance company refuses to pay $36,000 for Herceptin for one of its clients, the money saved is likely used to enhance profits.

The goal in Japan is not to isolate the criminal from society, but precisely the opposite. A convict is sent back to his neighborhood, family, and job so that the social pressure to fit in and the pain of being shamed before the group will lead him to go straight.

Some are rich and some are poor. Some are beautiful, some aren't. Some are brilliant, some aren't. But when we get sick—then, everybody is equal. Everybody must have equal right to the best medical treatment we can provide.

But Nikki White was a citizen of the world's richest country, the United States of America.