With all of your projected cures for the problem, you insist on mirroring the medical fraternity. You want to treat the symptoms only, and not even think about the disease.

Apparently you think of doctors as messiahs in white coats or scrubs. The news flash for you Tom is that a Lexus, four bedroom house with swimming pool and three car garage, country club membership, and bank drawing account of $ 1,000,000. probably shouldn't accompany every medical degree as an automatic entitlement.

Yet, that's what we are looking at here in Florida at least. One year out of med school gives carte blanche at the banks and furnishes the downpayment on an orange grove that makes the good doctor a gentleman farmer also.

There is no free market competition in medicine. Period. In no way. Yet you continue to blame the lawyers, health care plans ad absurdum. If you want to find fault, don't look at the government---look at the insurance companies, the hospitals, and yes, the doctors themselves for which the system currently stands.

The system is broken and only the authority of the government is big enough to fix it--and it will be an expensive fix.

The free enterprise system you tout is one that I totally agree with. The problem is this system applies to owner managed business and does not transfer over to non-owner professional management such as we see in the multi-national corporation.

Our health care and retirement system has the ability to destroy the American corporation and looking at the auto industry will give you an insight to this. How long will Ford Motor be able to hold on? Ford and GM both have huge obligations to retired workers and when they are faced with China's developing auto industry they will not be able to compete. GM is preparing by buying into China's industry as are the Japanese producers.

This is not a small problem, it has world wide considerations and saying "who is John Galt?" isn't going to solve them. Nor is only looking at part of the problem and applying tweaks going to get it either.

Publius