Actually, there was quite a bit of doubt about Iraq by the experts. It was the political leaders (George W. Bush and his underlings) that applied political pressure to distort the data. It's basically the same thing here.
There certainly was. My point however was that "research was done" and the statements which were true weren't timely, and those which were timely weren't true. That did not however stop pro war factions from using them. Likewise it is true that there is a huge collection of facts available, but if I set before someone not schooled in physics a technically complex book on quantum physics, I'd say it's fairly useless.
My point in bring up health care is that it's generally less well understood than a simple concept like exponentials, yet ignorance of one is abhorred and the other embraced. That's not the intent I'm sure, but there is a fundamental disconnect between what is said here and those who practice. We're scratching our heads about how to effectively address some things and despite our expertise we're unsure, yet those who have virtually no insight allegedly have the answers.
Understand I'm not against reform, in fact I'm for more than almost anyone here, but it's more about the health of the system itself. What seems to be poorly understood is that the system as imperfect as it is works, but not as well and adaptability as needed. We have near and long term changes in demographics which will break any system, here or abroad. Among things which must be dealt with are allocation of resources, how to get qualified people with the right skills into the right place at the right time, to eliminate duplication of resources and so on. Considering that these directly affect costs they cannot be divorced from them.
IMO we had a pivotal moment when health care became a serious topic of debate, but as with 9/11 we squandered it. Why? Because what was needed was not what was sought, nor even known much less understood. Medicine isn't bean counting, but bean counting affects it.
I've reached the conclusion that our world has become so complex that legislators are overwhelmed by it all. As they do not understand it, perhaps they lock arm in party arm to keep from being swept away. If one endures the storm one must be seen to be worthy.
Rather than play the game of "oh yeah I get that. Trust me", I think it's time that we have a large body of experts who can work together to get Congress going in the right direction. No one would suggest that companies build complex machinery designed by board members so why should we do the equivalent with government? Assured ignorance isn't a real answer.
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