Bill,
You might enjoy the excellent article by Steven Brill on what the true drivers of US healthcare costs are. It's the longest article Time has ever published, and it elucidates in painful exacting detail the through-the-looking glass quality of US healthcare pricing. Mostly it seems, pricing is simply made up. Competition among providers doesn't exist, and Brill argue it can't exist given the unequal power vested in providers (especially large hospitals) compared to payers.
The cheapest an most efficient payer in terms of overheard. Why it's Medicare of course.
Fee for service is ending. Will the collectivist impulse that replaces it in the short term (think large aggregations of doctors and hospitals receiving a set amount of money for each covered life) prove successful in altering the cost curve while still providing quality care, or will Obamacare prove to be the unmitigated disaster predicted by its opponents?
Time will tell.
Eli
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