Google veterans affairs and get back to me.

And that's not my BRAIN being contaminated by anything, its a simple statement of proven fact. When you look at most government run health systems the productivity of the underlying health care providers actually went down not up after intervention/nationalization (friedman gives a great talk on this.) If you simply displace price as a rationing mechanism and replace it with longer wait times or diminished quality then you haven't actually increased value or productive capacity you have simply traded one problem for another.

As for drug prices, so the regulatory environment causes an artificial shortage thus high prices and the solution is to give said government regulatory regime complete control of Health Care. Do we even listen to the things we say? One of the reasons that European countries can enjoy such low prices is because WE SHOULDER THE BURDEN for so much of the R & D that takes places in medical innovation (Yaaron Brooks quotes a rough 75% of medical innovation.) So if other countries use free ride drugs and second hand techniques that would be behind the curve in our domestic market then there lower sticker price is reflective of less quality not more.

As for this gobbldy gook about making people EXPERT. You don't have to be an architect to determine which house you like or what price you're willing to pay. I have never butchered a cow in my life, I know what kind of steak I like. Likewise, anyone with a basic understanding of math can determine what they can pay for a procedure, what they can pay in premiums, which plan has a lifetime cap etc. etc. etc. People should be more involved not less in the decisions that govern their lives. And the providers (both insurers and direct care providers) have vested interest in making prospective customers comfortable with their care, products and service.

Most importantly, how did we get in this mess. We partially created the mess of hording insurance companies to corporations and not individuals the last time that we had the misguided idea of wage and price controls. This was an unintended consequence that we all have to live with. One solution is allowing more people to form associations and pool their purchasing power to make them more attractive to insurers and thus get the best bang for their buck in the marketplace. On the employer side, we see more innovation and competition that has mitigated pre-existing conditions because of community rating and so on.

As for experts negotiating on my behalf, not greater fallacy has plagued this country since the concept of DISINTERESTED EXPERTS and the progressives in line of Woodrow Wilson. A person can either be disiniterested or an expert, they can't be both. And history has demonstrated no matter how expert a single person is that a.) they will always fall short of the knowledge and creativity of society as a whole and they will never advocate or represent you the way that you would for yourself. The last set of EXPERTS advocating for health reform in this country lied for a year and a half to people undergoing cancer treatment about the affect of their plan on their continuity of care and then spent 3 billion (with a b) on a website that didn't work that they released to tbe public anyway even though it failed a test load of 1100 people let alone 11 million. It's not my mind being contaminated with anything. It's instinct guided by experience.

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