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One of the major issues of this year's electoral campaign is health care. Most everyone agrees that our current system is broken. Forty-five million Americans don't have health insurance. Despite the fact that health care consumes over 15% of our GDP, far more than any other industrialized nation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), we're an appalling 37th on the list of healthiest countries. Canadians, British, Swedes, and Australians all enjoy longer life expectancies than we do. In fact, we barely edge out Slovenia on WHO's life expectancy tables. As politicians put forth an array of proposed solutions ranging from laws requiring everyone to carry health insurance, to the elimination of insurance and the adoption of HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) that would simply require everyone to pay for everything out-of-pocket, it is astounding that virtually no one is asking what we are spending the money on, and what we could do differently that might better serve us.

In the U.S., we do not have a health care system. We have a disease management industry; one that depends on expensive drugs, surgery, cutting-edge technology, and a style of medical crisis management that is heavily weighted against prevention, non-pharmaceutical solutions, and actual cures. The reason for this is simple: profit. The medical industry in the US is controlled by giant pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, Pfizer, Wyeth, etc. Since they are publicly owned, these pharmaceutical companies have a legal obligation to create a profit for their shareholders; but they do much more than that. Pfizer alone netted $19 million last year after R&D spending was accounted for. According to a report by Rep. Henry Waxman presented to the U.S. House of Representatives in Sept. 2006, in the six months following the inception of the new Medicare drug program on January 1, 2006, the ten largest pharmaceutical companies managed to increase their profits by $8 billion. Waxman's report notes, "Some analysts have estimated the high prices paid by the Medicare drug plans would mean tens of billions of dollars in additional profits for drug manufacturers."

All of this money means they have a lot of control over the "healthcare" industry. They finance nearly all of the medical research that takes place in the US, and to a large degree control what gets taught in the country's medical schools drugs and surgery. A pharma company can only make a profit on a treatment it can patent; this excludes therapies

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