Excellent letter Mr. Parker. Mr. Wohlforth is trying to get at the cause of extremely high medical cost/health insurance costs in Alaska but your letter  puts the finger on the button. Indeed if medical costs had not risen 91% over the past years then as you say insurance premiums would not have done so on a parallel track. It is obscene to think that medical costs are so inflated up here that people can fly to Seattle($600+or-), stay in a hotel($500+or-) and still save money on a routine procedure like a colonoscopy. This grossly inflated medical cost thing began when Reagan deregulated the medical industry and those not for profit General Hospitals became Corporate owned for profit HMOs. Medical care should not be a for profit industry but that is what it has become and it is why medical costs are inflated tens or hundreds of times more than general inflation levels. The markets cannot/will not regulate themselves as we saw with the financial industry as well as the medical industry.