Last Sunday (Nov. 23) the Washington Post ran a very illuminating article entitled: "5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System" . Facts the authors present lay waste to the claim inherent to O'Rourke's quote. Polarized Americans seem to think error and waste in medicine can be successfully laid at the door of such disparate institutions as "free market" or "big government," when in fact the problem is mostly one of morality. Private commercial enterprise exists for one reason only: to exact a profit. Ideally, representative government exists to serve the governed first, not itself. Why would a reasonable person turn over control of money/payments/costs in such a vital area as personal health, to an array of private corporations who exist first to maximize profits, and whose records are private? Government, for all its warts, can at least be held somewhat accountable by a vigilant, self-educated electorate. It just hasn't been. That's precisely why the US is the only democratically governed nation in the developed world (other than South Africa) that doesn't provide basic healthcare for all its people. It shows. The Post article points out they're all doing it much more cheaply than America is, and most of them are providing their citizens with a demonstrably higher level of care too.