our disease of ignorance

The Washington Post:

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

  1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.
  2. Overseas, care is rationed; limited choices; long lines.
  3. Foreign systems are inefficient, bloated.
  4. Cost controls stifle innovation.
  5. The most persistent myth of all:
    America has ‘the finest health care’ in the world.

We are the people with the most costly, confusing bureaucratic mess. Almost all advanced countries have better health statistics than the United States.

We should learn how our nation can be frozen in lies.

A very important reason companies argue against national reform is that there are currently few regulations over any type of insurance. Congress and the courts have avoided the insurance sector since the early 1800s.

Today, it’s health insurance firms worrying about losing their structure of regional monopoly, a very longtime favor:

Why is the American health system so crazy? Why do Americans spend so much more than anybody else for outcomes that aren’t a lot better? Well, we talk about the health market. We don’t have a health market. We have 50 state markets.

And although there are many, many insurers, in many states there are only one or two who are active.