Excerpt: The thesis of this book is simple: If we want to solve the nation's health care crisis, we must apply the same common-sense principles to medical care that we apply to other goods and services. In a 1991 New York Times/CBS News poll, almost 80 percent of the respondents agreed that the American 'health care system is headed toward a crisis because of rising costs.' The irony is that health care costs are rising because, for individual patients, medical care is cheap, not expensive. On the average, patients pay only 5 cents out-of-pocket for every dollar they spend in hospitals. The remainder is paid by private and public health insurance. Patients pay less than 19 cents out-of-pocket for every dollar they spend on physicians' services, and they pay less than 24 cents out of every dollar they spend on health care of all types. [The book was originally published in 1992 by The Cato Institute. The target page links to the full book and also has separate links to each chapter.]