The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. addresses health care finance reform in his column today, and he makes the salient point that the Tax Code is a big part of the problem:

This is surprising only to those who never understood why the tax code was the problem in the first place. Notice that the typical family policy doled out by companies to their employees represents a total price-tag of about $9,086 a year. If you’re in the top tax bracket, the effective after-tax cost to you is about $5,500. If you’re in the working-poor bracket (i.e. pay no federal income tax), it’s $9,086.
In fact, it’s doubtful that such an insurance product would even exist in the marketplace in the absence of a massive tax subsidy, given the built-in incentives that naturally drive costs out of sight. Certainly you wouldn’t buy gold-plated, first-dollar health insurance if you faced the full tab alone.

Then, Mr. Jenkins cuts to the heart of the main problem with America’s health care finance system — overreliance on the third party (i.e., insurer) payor system:

No serious person doubts that our overreliance on third-party payment is the problem that will be solved — or will lead to a government-run, single-payer system that controls costs by denying care. In our information-rich economy, the medical industry doesn’t even publish price lists. Is this not downright weird and a sign change is desperately needed? (The exception is cosmetic surgery, where, as health economist John Goodman points out, consumers pay out-of-pocket and competition has meant prices are flat or falling).

Alas, a bold proposal for health care finance reform is subject to the shifting winds of the current political campaign:

Some in the Bush camp were prepared to go deeper than even the HSA [explained here] kludge, totally revamping the tax system. The idea was to help Americans shift their expectations: No longer will they send their tax money to government and hope government will take care of them in old age. Now they will have ownership of the assets that will take care of them in old age.
Hope for such boldness on Thursday night probably vanished the moment it became clear John Kerry was going backward in the polls. It may be just as well. The HSA revolution suggests that simply offering taxpayers a better choice may be the stealthy way to reform entitlements (and let’s admit that the tax deductibility of employer health care is a giant middle-class entitlement) without frightening swing voters with any Big Bang-like proposals.