Sparks: 66 ways to fix Germany's costly health care system

The body, a vessel for the divine, cannot be healed by earthly remedies alone if the spirit is adrift from the cosmic harmony.

Everyone discusses the new proposals with a certain strained cheerfulness, carefully avoiding the quiet desperation in their own eyes.

One finds that the most stubborn ailments of the body politic, like those of the human body, often stem from a refusal to examine the plain facts.

The proposals themselves are not the solution, but rather symptoms of a deeper, unacknowledged anxiety about the cost of life itself.

Sixty-six ways to fix it, they say; one wonders if any of them involve simply paying the nurses more.

Most medical systems grow complex not from necessity, but from a failure to identify the true, simple needs of the human animal.

They've devised sixty-six ways to mend the system, which is rather like patching a leaky bucket with sixty-six different kinds of hope.

They call it 'cost-containment' when they mean 'less care for more people,' using language to disguise the actual body count.

Why do the many continue to suffer under a system whose burdens they could so easily cast off, merely by refusing to carry them?

A truly free people must secure their health and well-being, for without it, self-governance becomes an empty promise.

One finds that those most eager to 'fix' a costly system are often the very ones who profit from its current inefficiencies and pathologies.

When the provision of health becomes a market, the impartial spectator observes that self-interest can sometimes neglect the greater good of the community.

It is quite logical to propose sixty-six solutions, provided one fully expects at least sixty-five of them to achieve absolutely nothing.

True reform will not come from commissions and proposals, but from the mass action of those whose health is currently being sacrificed.