Editorial Board
The US Health-Care System Is Flawed By Design
Employer-sponsored coverage inflates costs and adds a maddening degree of complexity.
Pick the right target.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
The middlemen that comprise a growing share of America’s convoluted health-care system find themselves in a bind. The public is angry about the inflated costs and opaque dealings that govern their access to medical care. Lawmakers, despite recent setbacks, are eager to respond. Intermediaries have become an obvious target for blame and reform.
A sharper focus on the role middlemen play in health care is justified. But faulting them for the nation’s dismal outcomes fails to address the system’s larger dysfunction: employer-sponsored health insurance.