American Health Care Condition: Critical

There are two kinds of prices in America today: regular prices and health- care prices. The first kind seems to follow some sensible laws of supply and demand. But America's medical bills are something else. They flow from a surreal world where science has lost connection with reality, where bureaucracy and paperwork have no limit, where a half-hour tonsillectomy costs what an average worker earns in three weeks. The prices, like the system that issues them, are out of control. Examples:

-- Annual dose of human growth hormone for a child with a severe deficiency: $20,000.

-- Coronary bypass surgery for...