I’m a week late on this, but Holman Jenkins has an excellent discussion of why health care costs and pricing (not the same thing!) are insane, and why ObamaCare will only make it worse:

Duke University’s Clark Havighurst [wrote] a brilliant 2002 article that describes the regulatory, legal and tax subsidies that deprive consumers of both the incentive and opportunity to demand value from medical providers. Americans end up with a “Hobson’s choice: either coverage for ‘Cadillac’ care or no health coverage at all.”

“The market failure most responsible for economic inefficiency in the health-care sector is not consumers’ ignorance about the quality of care,” Mr. Havighurst writes, “but rather their ignorance of the cost of care, which ensures that neither the choices they make in the marketplace nor the opinions they express in the political process reveal their true preferences.”

You might turn next to an equally fabulous 2001 article by Berkeley economist James C. Robinson, who shows how the “pernicious” doctrine that health care is different—that consumers must shut up, do as they’re told and be prepared to write a blank check—is used to “justify every inefficiency, idiosyncrasy, and interest-serving institution in the health care industry.”

Hospitals, insurers and other institutions involved in health care may battle over available dollars, but they also share an interest in increasing the nation’s resources being diverted into health care—which is exactly what happens when costs are hidden from those who pay them.

Put aside whether President Obama could have pushed real reform if he wanted to. ObamaCare as it emerged from Congress fulfills the insight that any highly regulated system ends up benefiting those with influence, i.e., health-care providers and high-end customers, not those of modest means.

What are ObamaCare’s mandates on individuals and employers except an attempt to force back into the insurance market those who have been priced out by previous “reforms” so their money can be used to prop up a system of gold-plated coverage that mostly benefits those in the highest tax brackets? What are ObamaCare’s minimum coverage standards except a requirement that these customers buy more costly coverage than they would choose for themselves so their money can be used for somebody else?

I include a lengthy excerpt from Robinson’s excellent article in my chapter for the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism.