That is almost certainly more than enough to provide decent acute and chronic care for everyone and adequate support for medical education, if the money were spent in a different, more socially responsive, and better organized manner. The problem lies in generating the political will to reform the present system. Medical care is an essential human service. It must be responsive to needs and be governed by ethical values. It cannot be successfully distributed, therefore, by unregulated market forces.
Medical education is a vital prerequisite for good medical care.
It, too, as Kenneth Ludmerer's masterful history so persuasively demonstrates, cannot thrive in a market-dominated system. Two From Spain Stanley Kauffmann reviews Solas and Goya in Bordeaux.