Let me get this straight

A few weeks ago a great friend of mine, who also happens to be a physician, forwarded me the following email. The subject line was "Let me get this straight."

"Let me get this straight. We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it, and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What possibly could go wrong?"

To this, I simply reply:

Let me get this straight. Our health care industry is run by MBA's in suits, who pay doctors who are millionaires and hospitals owned by Wall Street shareholders a fraction of their overinflated bills, but no one knows how much they pay for their medical bills because health insurance companies send 'Explanation of Benefits' letters that read like an Enron income statement, but patients can't change health insurance companies because their employers select which insurance company they get, and the same insurance company spends most of its time tying not to pay bills because it's searching for 'pre-existing conditions,' even though it earns more profit every year and charges so much that almost a quarter of the population can't afford it, and, in the end, we all end up paying twice as much just to be half as healthy as the rest of the civilized world? What is wrong?