Health Care Costs Out of Control

David Brooks has a deep sense of pessimism about any real control of health care costs in the coming years, upon which the Obama administration is basing its economic program:

If you read the C.B.O. testimony and talk to enough experts, you come away
with a stark conclusion: There are deep structural forces, both in Medicare and
the private insurance market, that have driven the explosion in health costs. It
is nearly impossible to put together a majority coalition for a bill that
challenges those essential structures. Therefore, the leading proposals on
Capitol Hill do not directly address the structural problems. They are a
collection of worthy but speculative ideas designed to possibly mitigate their
effects.