Ah, but it was free.
Yes, and worth every penny. And that is the central fact of socialism - it is always sold to the public as saving money, but in fact what it systematically does is to outlaw whatever is not cheap.Hillary and the Democrats speak of "quality health care," but the reality of socialism is that you cannot eliminate top quality, bleeding-edge health care and still maintain even the current standard of normal care. That is so because, as Tom Peters pointed out in In Search of Excellence, if you stop trying to improve you will not maintain where you were, you will go backward.
Furthermore, the mission of the United States is "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. And the "blessings of liberty" include the vigorous entrepreneurship which continuously improve both the quality and the economy of the things and services we want. To stop improving health care now would be to betray our grandchildren, who deserve to mature to our age and pity us for the almost primitive nature of our health care compared to that which is our legacy to them - just as you and I pity our grandparents and even our parents for the relatively primitive health care which was available to them.
My own mother had a kidney removed about 25 years ago, and the incision was nearly halfway around the circumference of her body. Today that same operation would do so little collateral damage that you would be able to leave the hospital a day after the surgery. I don't know how exactly they will make similar improvements in surgery over the next two generations - but surely it would be folly to close the patent office on the assumption that "everything has already been invented."