Let me try it again. Kaus says that he wouldn't mind if health care costs go up. Of course he wouldn't mind: as a nation we collectively pay for health care, allowing money to be siphoned off in the form of profits to the insurance companies and other private interests.

The people who have insurance pay for the insurance. Taxpayers pay for the public health care, i.e. Medicare, Medicaid, the military system and the VA. Everybody pays. (Even the people who only pay sales tax.)

Meanwhile, only people (and not all of them) with wealth, insurance, or public health care get anywhere near adequate care.

So people who have health care, and are relatively well off (Kaus, for example), don't see the urgency of controlling costs or expanding services. Why should they? They've got theirs, and we're all paying for it.