Medary.com

The Bush Administration's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, seems to understand the fundamental problem of our health care system, in Investors Business Daily:

What if we bought cars the same way we buy health care? The dealer would say, "Look, we don't really know the price of our cars, but we know you really need one. So, why don't you just come by and pick one up."

Then three weeks later you would begin receiving a blizzard of bills — a bill from the people who made the chassis, a bill from people who made the transmission, a bill from the seat maker and the paint people and the folks who made the sound system.

Then you'd get the bill from the dealership, including a $27.90 charge for the coffee you drank while in the showroom.

Gratefully, cars aren't sold that way. All of those costs are packaged and managed by a car company. Consumers get one price, and it's a price they can understand.

We need packaged deals for health care, too.

The current system of health care financing is totally broken.  The nickle-and-dime nature of the industry is a huge problem, it's true.  The inability of the industry to give people prior knowledge of the costs (something that the rest of the world refers to as an "estimate" is another huge problem.  The inordinate power of insurance companies is another problem--one which will only be exacerbated if you replace private insurance companies with an unresponsive government bureaucracy (reference Canada, Britain).

My problem with the current proposals from Leavitt and others currently running the show is that their solutions continue to be half-hearted half measures, doomed to failure.  Health care needs to be returned to a focused relationship between a consumer and someone selling their services--the doctor, the nurse, the technician.  Government and insurance companies need to get the hell out of the way.