i dunno, liberals maybe? i hate price controls. i dunno, but my handbook says it sucks every time the government takes anyone's money. maybe liberals are the ones you should blame for people being overtaxed.
It might just help to go back to taxing all benefits as income. Right now no one gives a rip what is charged because of insurance which is paid for by the employer (typically). Of course we would have to lower the tax rates to adjust for this. If folks had Medical Savings Accounts (MSA I think), they might just be a little more selective with what they spend. The physicians might be able to charge less since they don't have to play the insurance game. There could probably be some reasonably priced catastrophic insurance to take care of the real big items. But broken bones, medications, etc. would come out of the MSA.
Liberals? Try Ronald Reagan. Actually, I shouldn't use the term price controls - because they aren't price controls. It is simply acting like a prudent consumer. It was easy to do that with hospitals (most were not for profit - little real political clout), tougher with physicians (AMA). But when it comes to drug companes and campaign contributions to the republican party, requiring the government to serve as a prudent consumer has about the same chance of happening as an audit of Halliburton or Dick Cheney submitting any contract to public bid. The two big bills right now - drug benefits and the proposed energy bill, which consists of nothing but cash handouts (wealth transfers from the middle class to republican campaign contributors), pretty much ends the republican myth as prudent spenders.
