joseph.amanCSA1861, your restaurant illustration is perfect. Think how inflated restaurant prices would be if the majority of customers decided to spare themselves excruciating menu choices by participating in ‘socialist collectives’ like the one you describe. The restaurant sector would boom, but anyone without ‘coverage’ would be eating at home, unable to afford or justify the outrageous prices. Medical insurance, in whatever form, private or public, is inefficient and inflationary. It leads, inevitably, to a state-controlled system… Socialism (or the well-intended fascism of Obamacare). And so it should, since private insurance drives the cost of medical services up beyond the reach of all but the ‘well-employed’ elite. As the ranks of this elite shrink, some form of public insurance is required to balance the moral equation even while leaving the economic one ever more distorted… a downward economic spiral to match the upward one in this ‘booming’ sector.