Pretty astute critique. I still think we'll be able to get some significant improvements out of this round of reform, knock wood.

The idea that we have begun supporting a health care bubble is interesting and could have used more discussion.

Heard this guy on NPR. Still thinks the market will be able going to solve healthcare on its own, that the only problem is no cost accountability. That's one problem, but not the only one, and the market is only efficient at what the market's efficient at, which is maximizing profit.

Ditto to Meeks - we both heard the same broadcast.

Let's see what other fun park curiosities pop out of this "everyone's got an opinion on health care these days" thrill ride.

I believe it. A friend of mine (without insurance) had to go to the ER for strep throat. Caught mrsa while he was there and it turned into a major systemic infection.

This paragraph seemed shockingly familiar:

About a week after my father’s death, The New Yorker ran an article by Atul Gawande profiling the efforts of Dr. Peter Pronovost to reduce the incidence of fatal hospital-borne infections. Pronovost’s solution? A simple checklist of ICU protocols governing physician hand-washing and other basic sterilization procedures. Hospitals implementing Pronovost’s checklist had enjoyed almost instantaneous success, reducing hospital-infection rates by two-thirds within the first three months of its adoption. But many physicians rejected the checklist as an unnecessary and belittling bureaucratic intrusion, and many hospital executives were reluctant to push it on them. The story chronicled Pronovost’s travels around the country as he struggled to persuade hospitals to embrace his reform.

See: Semmelweis. Jesus.