[MichaelCorleone]

“But none of them seems to be looking at the root causes of the increases in costs for medical care; so they are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Right - very good point.

[Steve_Seattle]

“But none of them seems to be looking at the root causes of the increases in costs for medical care; so they are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

What are the root causes, and what can be done about them?

I'll just give a hint: my mother drank or smoked very little in her life, and is now 97. She is a Type II diabetic, who for more than a decade has required daily insulin shots. She has had several hospitalizations over the years - at least four or five - and now lives in an adult care home. The cost of all this care must now total upwards of three or four hundred thousand dollars, and goes up seven or eight thousand dollars a month.

Everyone does not live to be 97, but everyone expects to have this sort of health care. One thing that drives up the cost of health care is our expectations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning people for having those expectations, but we need to face the fact that our expectations are going to mean that we are going to have to prioritize health care at the expense of some other things. The only place I can see us getting that sort of money is by cutting the military budget, which is - by far - the largest in the world.