The issue is not that Americans are dramatically unhealthier than the rest of the world, we actually have a relatively young population. The issue is not that we are using too much care, we use comparatively little. The problem is not that our payment model inherently makes spending higher. The simple problem is that our government, unlike almost all other first world governments, allows health care companies with incredible market power to rip off both public and private consumers. If we want to bring down costs the answer is simple, we need to adopt one of the standardized price control systems proven to be effective in the rest of the first world.

The real concern should be to make sure Americans don’t need to worry about whether or not they can afford to get sick; in that department, even its supporters admit the Affordable Care Act is lacking. We are going to make people buy insurance they can’t afford to use.

Although the growth of health care costs means it must remain a top political issue, we seem doomed to have our elected officials embrace destructive, regressive “solutions” that don’t fix the problem. The Republican Party, Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission, and even the Obama administration are all devotees of the economic dogma that forcing regular Americans to pay even more out-of-pocket for health care will control costs.