An interesting article on prescription drugs. I don't know that its the final word on it--and its a more economically conservative bent than you usually see out of the New Yorker--but it certainly gives food for thought.

Living without health insurance for well over a year now has given me perspective from both sides of the coin. Certainly there's a case to be made that the costs of medical care are at least in part derived from people with no economic stake making decisions which they are most likely not scientifically qualified to make; for example, (and I'm stealing this example from the article) the patient who insists on a COX2 inhibitor, which probably isn't going to be any more effective than your typical aspirin/ibuprofen/acetominophen regimen at relieving arthritis pain, but costs hundreds more per month. But its also ridiculous that we live in a country with a per-capita income that dwarfs the LIFETIME income of a citizen in half the world and we haven't got any kind of national healthcare system.

There's got to be some middle ground, and by middle ground I'm not referring to a bogus scheme involving a savings account.