About 10% of the community I live in is made up of French Canadians who have second homes in Florida and come down here for the winter months. They are elderly, but are a pretty affluent bunch. Sure, they complain about their health care, the same way we do, waiting for an appointment, doctors being overworked, lots of paperwork, delays for elective procedures, etc. But when asked if they prefer our system you get the Great Canadian "Eh?" Not one, so far, has chosen ours over theirs. In fact, as soon as the weather starts to turn, or if they get sick, they head on back home tout de suite.

As the article implies, health care in the US is a recession-proof, high growth, high profit industry. No one financially benefitting from that wants to threaten it, so it is never going to get better and it can only get worse. This is one case where the market simply offers no incentive to cut costs. Indeed, just the opposite.

I do concede a government bureaucracy may not work any better here, we seem to have developed a genius for perverting them, but there are other alternatives. How about a co-op? I've mentioned them before as part of the "socialized medicine" that was offered by private non-profit clinics associated with social clubs when I was a kid. They were non-profit but there was certainly financial incentive to cut costs and provide a good product; the managers and providers of these plans were paid, licenced, thoroughly legal professionals and they competed against one another just like businesses do.

Co-ops are widely used in the agricultural world to protect farmers from the depradations of middlemen, and they work. Medical co-ops were in wide use in urban, immigrant America around the first half of the last century, it was an "Anarchist" idea that they had brought with them from the Old Country and they were quite effective in spite of bitter opposition by the local medical establishment. In essence, they were self-insured subscription-financed non-profit corporations competing in a free market. I'm no expert in this area, but I mention it to point out that we are not forced to choose between laissez-faire monopoly and massive government bureaucracy. There may be another way, if we can just get away from ideological thinking.