For a person who has concluded that the Affordable Care Act was not only bad legislation but a missed opportunity to do something meaningful about controlling health care costs. Chris Conover highlighted this problem in the article, Steven Brill On Obamacare: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription, on Forbes.com.

And perhaps most disturbing of all, when Stahl presses him “is there any way now to go back and add cost containment” Brill opines “it was impossible then; it’s more impossible now”  ultimately concluding that only when it becomes a fiscal crisis will we do anything to rein in spending.

I disagree with Mr. Brill.  The task has become more difficult but the VA model will not be a solution in my lifetime. That political bridge to a single payer system was burned with the scandal. Now we are negotiating health care cost efficiency reforms without Medicaid expansion to lure politicians to the table. You have to start somewhere and there is no other choice!

Next time someone starts whining about income inequality tell them controlling health care costs would have been a good first step at putting money back into the middle class’s pocket book.