Between insurance and government medical subsidies, the medical industry has been cut almost entirely loose from any market forces that would normally keep costs in line. All of us remember a time when people used to pay for routine medical costs out of their pockets, and insurance was for major hospitalization and emergencies. Dentists were cheap before dental insurance came around. Veterinary medicine is still pretty cheap, but with pet health insurance coming into vogue, I expect this to change.

The free market always works. When you screw with it, it works against you.

Attempts to make the government responsible for more and more medical costs are making it worse too. An article in Consumer Reports showed a graph of the growth of medical costs over the years. There is a sharp upward bend in the graph when Medicare comes into the picture, and the line angles upward.

Now consumers have now gotten it fixed in their head that they shouldn't have to pay for medical care. Even those covered entirely by private insurance, with the government out of the picture entirely, are indignant about having to pay ANYTHING out of their pockets. How may people have bitched about a $20 copayment for something that might have cost them thousands otherwise?

Until some method is found to make people responsible for their own costs--medical savings accounts could help a bit here--this is only going to get worse.

Of course, for those whose fondest desire is to see the government take over the medical industry entirely, the situation is just grand. The worse it gets with HMOs, the insurance industry, and other private attempt to meet medical needs, the better the socialized medicine folks like it.