America's health care system has three fundamental problems: cost, quality and access. Why do we have these problems? What do the Democratic presidential candidates propose to do about them?
Health care spending per capita is growing at twice the rate of growth of national income. If that trend continues, health care will crowd out every other form of consumption by the time today's college students retire. The reason for this dilemma is that patients are rarely forced to choose between health care and other uses of money. No one is ever asked to decide whether one more knee replacement or one more MRI scan is worth the money it costs. No one ever has to decide whether it is worthwhile to spend one-third of Medicare's budget on patients who are in the last year of life.