The problem with public health care is not only underfunding, poor oversight, or the absence of yet another audit. The problem is a model in which society pays, doctors and facilities increasingly operate as market actors, and the patient is left in the role of a petitioner who can, at most, file a complaint. Before we point to the guilty, however, it is worth seeing something less theatrical: this system is blind. It does not add up who it pays and what it pays for, so it cannot distinguish honesty from the appearance of honesty. Perhaps it is time to democratize it.
