re:  "Throwing more dollars at a broken health care system"

In describing the work Congress is doing to "reform" the US health care system, Dr. Ho makes a good diagnosis:  the current health care system is "broken" — riddled with inefficiencies, and rapidly rising in cost.  Unfortunately, her prescription is based on an incorrect starting premise.

Rather than depending on policymakers "create a health care system" that would "take the politically unpopular action of telling the public" which medical processes to which they should have access — putting medical decisions in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, and paid for by taxpayers — a better approach would be to put medical decisions in the hands of patients who have a financial stake in acquiring all the information and making an informed decision.

Because a third party (either the insurance company or, in nearly half of all cases now, the government) ends up paying for medical services, individual patients have no incentive not to " want access to every treatment prescribed by their physician".  A person eating dinner on an expense account rarely worries about frugality.

Rather than creating a complex government-imposed health care system, a better approach would be to empower individuals and remove barriers to a free, competitive market, in which consumers have a direct incentive to be better stewards of health care expenditures (while maintaining insurance coverage that fits their respective needs) and insurance companies have a direct incentive to offer better, more innovative options at better prices.

Let's return the power to consumers, not politicians, bureaucrats, and corporations.

Sincerely,
Dave Smith
Houston, TX