The central problem of this election is that we're faced with two ninnies who tend to believe in nothing except their personal desirability to be President-elect. People assume that health care costs are driven up by inefficiency, ineptitude, and greed. All three certainly exist. But that's not the primary problem. The basic problem is the success of medicine.
Good medicine keeps people alive.
One doesn't need to go to a statistical manual to know that you'll find more of such people who are chronically ill in the U.S. than in the Sudan. There, sick people die. Here, sick people go on to become very expensive users of health care. In addition, we'll end up spending more with AIDS than they do in India or Africa. It's tragic that now that medicine is entering its golden age, a lack of goals will constrain it.