Writing for the commie-pinko Washington Monthly, Philip Longman, a fellow at the unabashedly socialist New America Foundation, has foreseen the end of the capitalist health care market and the coming of socialized medicine in America. Capitalism and health care provision are incompatible, he suggests, as they result in waste and unnecessarily high prices that benefit the medical bourgeoisie at the expense of the patient. Profit-seeking doctors and hospitals offer health care services that do not improve health outcomes. Powerless and ignorant, patients have no choice but to purchase wasteful services. The exorbitant cost of American medicine is rooted in the exploitation of patients. Its victims will not suffer this injustice long. Seriously though, the anti-market critique of the U.S. health care delivery system (developed by Arnold Relman, Maggie Mahar, and others) is becoming mainstream. In my search to understand the issue, I haven't found anything else that better explains why the U.S. pays so much more for health care than other countries do, but does not get better health outcomes. The health care delivery system is set up in a way that promotes ineffective procedures that waste money, while failing to encourage the provision of procedures that could save lives. Longman's article does a good job detailing the evidence and mechanism at work here. A reform to control medical costs (which also just happens to be one of the public's top domestic policy priority) would seem to have to address these root causes.