I agree with all of your statements, but I'm still left with a problem...the problem.

We've all agreed, I think, that we have a serious problem with the cost of healthcare in the U.S. Measured as either cost per capita or as a percentage of GDP, it's increasing at an unsustainable rate. It will both "break" us while at the same time reducing healthcare insurance coverage for millions of Americans. I heard a statistic this morning that as recently as 2000, 61% of American businesses provided some form of health insurance for their employees. This year's statistic shows that only 38% of employers do so today. The problem we're facing is serious. Both the citizens of the U.S. and our elected representatives have been ignoring the problem(s) for years.

We also seem to agree that a big chunk of the cost problem is the cost of caring for those with no insurance. A lot of those people are illegal immigrants. Both the numbers of illegals and simply uninsured Americans are growing rapidly. Again, we're back to the growing cost problem with no apparent solution. The immigration problem in particular has proven to have no politically acceptable solution within our government--or even among our citizens!.

We would all like to believe that the principles laid down by our Founding Fathers would work. Over the very long term, they have. But right now we're facing a serious problem with the cost of healthcare that has to be fixed in the short term, not the long. The "enemy" isn't just forming up on the horizon, they're coming in over the edge of our foxhole!

I'd like to believe that the free enterprise system could bail us out of this one. But who's going to do it? Will the drug companies give in? Will the insurance companies get together and agree on standardized coverages and claim processing? Will they voluntarily agree to maybe reduce their profit margins? Will hospitals voluntarily reduce their costs? Will the trial lawyers agree to stop suing for millions and hoping just to settle out of court? Will the firms doing medical research voluntarily slow down their efforts because as a country we can't afford to continue to fund them? Will the doctors agree to work for what they would earn if they worked in Europe? Will U.S. citizens who can afford to do so volunteer to pay for their own healthcare rather than use Medicare? The Brits have an answer for these types of questions...not bloody likely, they'd say.

No, this is like the recent Chrysler and GM bankruptcies. Both companies could not survive with the cost structures they had in place. But there was no way that the creditors and stakeholders could or would agree on who's ox was going to get gored the worst in the bankruptcy. So the government stepped in and played hard ball with them all. I don't agree with all the settlements that the government demanded, but I know that GM and Chrysler would be in liquidation today without the government's intervention.

So again, we need the government to step in and re-form the health care industry. I guess I should say the re-form the cost structure of the healthcare industry; I think we'd all be willing to let the things that would show us to be a healthier country wait for longer term solutions. The industry itself is incapable of doing it without the intervention of a third party.

Our government has done nothing to earn our trust in recent years. But unfortunately, they're the only ones who can solve this problem. All we can hope for is that our government will assure that "the change is managed with logic and science to confirm that the change will do good rather than make things worse". What other alternative do we have?