"Now I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Dave, you have painted a distorted and inaccurate picture of the American health-care system. Not all patients wind up being as wretched as Mary! Many of them wind up being dead." True, but let's not get nitpicky. The point is, our health-care system is a terrible mess. It's expensive, wasteful, inefficient, unresponsive, and infested with lawyers. Which is why there has been a big push, in some quarters, to place it under the management of... The federal government. This is like saying if your local police department has a corruption problem, the solution is to turn law enforcement over to the Sopranos. Nevertheless, there are people- intelligent, educated, well-meaning people- who seriously believe that we should let Washington redesign our health-care system. It goes without saying that these people live and work in Washington; that's the only place where you're going to find intelligent, educated, well-meaning people who are that stupid."