Providing lower-cost ways of providing health care is directly contrary to the interests of anyone with political or economic power in our country: the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that directly benefit from high prices, the politicians who receive bribes in exchange for passing laws that keeps prices high (or just failing to pass laws that would lower prices), and the typical employer who can use the increasing importance of health insurance and the threat of medical bankruptcy as leverage against his employees when negotiating work conditions and pay.

Our health care system is, like basically any other institution of note in the US, first and foremost a means to effect the transfer of wealth to our economic and political elites from the rest of us. We need to first come to recognize that our system is currently working as intended before we can think clearly on what to do about it and take effective action.