US health-care system faces cost and insurance crises.

The US health-care system again appears to be lurching towards crisis. While most US hospitals must provide indigent care, the uninsured are less likely to receive care and the same quality of care than insured patients, according to a 2002 report by the US National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM). How 19% of uninsured people with heart disease and 13% with hypertension did not have a regular health-care provider, the IOM found, and when uninsured patients developed acute cardiovascular disease, they were less likely to receive angiography and revascularisation procedures and more likely to die.But unless the US economy turns around and people grow more confident that they will be able to get jobs with health insurance, health care is likely to become a major political issue in next year's presidential election, especially as the Democrats are beginning to perceive health care as an issue on which President Bush is vulnerable.