Try to imagine with me in the theater of the mind the North Korean health care system as a person. What would it look like with the economy in shambles, the dictatorship holding the world hostage with nukes until they are given free stuff to keep the people from starving to death? If their health system was represented as a person in your mind what would the person look like do you think? A feeble old man barely able to walk perhaps? 
Now imagine the Canadian health care system with its rationed services, months long waiting times to see specialists, emergency rooms packed with cases of minor bumps and infections because they either don't have a family doctor or can't afford the fee charged by doctors under the growing fee for services two-tiered system. If you could imagine that system as a person what would it look like? When I think of the Canadian health system I see Erkel. A young, intellectually strong kid with no more physical strength than a dew worm. I see a health system responsible for killing the people under its care through inability to deliver on its oath and managing costs by euthanizing the end user all the while running around saying "did I do that?"
Now imagine the American health system. It's easy for me to do. I've had major surgery in the US, I've seen and experienced it and I know that the capitalist model has given rise to the most amazing life extending medical system on earth in the most prosperous nation on earth... however... It is dying and here's why.
The ancient Roman ruler Caligula was famous for many unsavory things. One of them was the many ways he invented to implement capital punishment. And one of the ways he devised was known as "death by a thousand cuts". It was a slow death. The executioner would stab the person repeatedly with a short blade until the person bled to death. Caligula hoped to witness the person's soul leave the body if the person simply died slowly enough. But who is stabbing the American medical system?
Imagine it in anatomical terms. The human body consists of several separate systems. One of those is the elementary system, you know, the one which allows you to eat and digest and eliminate food. Another is your respiratory system. You breath in, your lungs take oxygen from the air and enriches your blood with it.
If there was a total breach of the dividers which keep those two systems separate within the body you will die - no 'if's 'and's or 'but's.
However, the two systems share certain dynamics. For instance the elementary system is full of bacteria; some of it harmful but most is beneficial. But from your mouth clear on down to your rear end is one long train of bacteria, baby!
The lungs also have bacteria, healthy little bugs which assist in lung function - though in much smaller amounts.
Now imagine the elementary system of the human body as the American legal system. Shouldn't be very difficult. Now imagine the respiratory system as the American medical system. Early on the main concern of the medical system was providing the very best care in the world with the best trained and best paid doctors on earth. Every once in a while a doctor was found to be grossly negligent and was charged and sued. Great. The legal system gets to periodically infiltrate the medical system and rarely share something in common. But one somebody saw the potential for a pay day.
Early on we called them "ambulance chasers" and they garnered very little respect and were not taken very seriously. But little by little, after thousands of tiny little cuts, they began to take over the medical system. Mistakes by hospital staff, whether real or contrived turned into judgments worth millions of dollars and eventually hospitals were forced to hire legal staff to thwart the possibility of legal liability and now the hospitals are forced to charge enormous amounts of money for procedures just to pay for their own lawyers and liability insurance. And as those costs have gone up so too has the cost of insurance - so high that vast numbers of people can't afford it. The two systems, which should never have been allowed to mix, have become integrated into a soupy mixture of expensive paydays and the common man has been left out to die.
The answer here is not to force everyone to purchase a product i.e. health insurance. This has made Obama into a dictator. The answer here is tort reform. You have to separate the two systems again so they can once again function cleanly and efficiently. Until that happens the poop will dominate and destroy the lungs until the entire body is dead. I hate to say it but it really is true - time to put a few lawyers out of business if we really want to save the best medical system on earth. If Obama is allowed to continue, this patient is a goner.
