"If Health Care Is Going to Change, Dr. Brent James's Ideas Will Change It" - NYTimes.com

What a marvelous contribution to our understanding of the health care issues that confront us.

One aspect of this that eludes me is why we have let the system evovle to the point of where so much of health care is an accounting exercise between insurance companies and health care providers. At what point did we all decide that we were no longer going to be the ones to get billed first if we received health care, that we were not the ones to debate the charges and to shop around if we chose to do so? All of that seems alien to the idea of making health care both better and less expensive.