Another good column by Charles Wohlforth. The incredibly high cost of health care is a huge drag on the Alaskan economy and nobody seems interested in addressing it. The only way you can bring down health costs in our current system is with bargaining power to pressure providers to accept lower costs; insurance groups in the lower 48 do it all the time. The ideal solution of course is a single payer plan which has the power to keep costs down and also gives patients complete freedom in choosing their provider. Alaska could make a step in this direction if all the government plans (covering roughly 30% of Alaskans) were combined into a single plan and then businesses and individuals were also allowed to purchase into that plan. That could produced a large enough patient group to exert bargaining power and to spread the risk over more customers.