[cmiles74]

I don't feel comfortable laying the abysmal and depressing tar pit of money and productivity that is the US healthcare system at the feet of "capitalism". In my opinion, the clumsy and inefficient interplay between health care providers, insurance companies, employers, the state and (lastly) individual people strikes me as one of the least capitalist-like situations we see today. It's almost a thought experiment: what would the US look like if people could afford to choose an affordable insurance company, peruse the various healthcare providers and choose among them and, lastly, be able to predict (with some amount of reliability) their healthcare costs over time?

Personally, I can't imagine it. All I know is that it wouldn't look like what we have now. Likewise, this argument that any criticism of the US healthcare system is somehow a criticism of capitalism strikes me as particularly unhelpful.