Interesting discussion here on how the financial and credit crisis in American is causing upheaval in the healthcare industry and is expected to continue to do so. Hospitals delaying construction; purchases of high technology gadgets canceled; doctors delaying retirement because of investment losses.

Good coverage on both sides of the issue–the negatives but also the positives that could come out of it. That our fascination with high-tech stuff hasn’t made the quality of care higher, so maybe we can learn to do things better instead of throwing money at them. That we have a huge number of people without insurance and therefore with little or no access to healthcare, so maybe this is a good time to institute reform. That doctors delaying retirement could mean we won’t suffer quite so soon such a shortage of general practitioners as is expected as the baby boomers age.

Also both presidential candidates claim they will not forget about their healthcare reform agendas–and one source claiming that the fact that the government just paid $600 billion to bail out Wall Street is a clear sign that health care will never receive top priority. It’ll be interesting to see what happens after the election.