The reason the current system cratered is from attempting to bolt a managed care kludge on a system that is still a structurally free market environment.
The reason you can see advertising from a half dozen auto insurance companies all begging for the chance to save you money and improve your service is because in that part of the market the government stayed on as a field leveler and didn't field a team. They compete for individual decisions in a national market that is regulated in each state separately and the competition works. Last time I checked they were all evilly driven by filthy profit.
The feds ruined the system. Watching what happened after the HMO act of 1973 and the use of the tax code to make a job=coverage and Medicare virtually killed the individual policy.
If you're younger than 40ish you have never seen a health care system that wasn't in decline and inflation is a dry term in a history book.
Prior to the late '70's there weren't many countries with universal care that didn't find the care here superior in both access and consistency. That's not to say if you were rich you didn't get better care or there weren't areas like Appalachia or some inner cities lacking good care, but you didn't see middle class level families going bankrupt in large numbers because of it.
I have no love for health insurance providers, but all the figures I've been able to dig up show a profit margin of 3-6%.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/02/...ank-88-by.html
Not chump change, but driving a stake through their hearts isn't the answer.
The only way I can see making it work is if we either go totally VA with the Government pulling the entire process out of what remains of the free market or to dismantle the system to bring true competition back in a meaningful way. How anyone could watch what's gone on in the last year and still think giving the feds even more things that fall under the "third rail" category is the answer is beyond me.