>Why people can have the ahistorical delusion that universal health care can
>ignore that pattern is beyond me?
Incremental changes in health care have often made things worse. The insane patchwork of programs - public & private, state & local, out-of-pocket & third-party - conspire to make things more expensive and more complicated than they have to be. Whatever little change might make sense in itself males less than no sense at the level of the whole. The only sane approach now - and I mean the only one - is a single, universal system that can cover everyone not now covered, reduce the expense and uncertainty for the already insured, and address cost and quality issues. Anything else is almost certain to do harm.
Doug