Galveston County Daily News, May 8, 2007 By Howard Brody, M.D. In recent columns, I have waxed pessimistic about prospects for health care reform. Us older types who yearn for the day when the United States extends healthcare coverage to all have been disappointed so many times, we're afraid to get our hopes up. But now I'm singing a different tune. I think there is truly a new spirit of reform abroad in the air. It's demonstrated by the fact that those who oppose a government-managed, single-payer ("Canadian style") health system have at long last come to the table to debate. Before this, there were basically two sides to the reform debate. One side was for universal access, and the only offer on the table to make this happen was something run by the government. The other side was the anti-big-government crowd. That crowd was full of rhetoric extolling the free market, but they had no concrete plan to turn free-market workshop into universal health care access. Indeed, all the policy wonks agreed that none of the free-market-based "plans" would ever guarantee universal access in America.(Link available later today.)