State the obvious

In this review over at Salon of Michael Moore's new film Sicko, Stephanie Zacharek makes a powerful and rather obvious point, but one that we do not, strangely enough, hear very often:

"There's something desperately wrong with a nation whose healthcare system... exists not to keep people well and healthy but to make a profit off them."

One day, perhaps not too far from now, a good historian will write the story of how our "system" became so distorted. I think it will have a lot to do with the sorry state of economic science, and its almost religious belief in the power of greed and free markets. In fact, one writer, Robert Nelson, has already explored this theme in his brilliant book Economics as Religion. It's the best thing I've ever read about economics.