After "consumer driven health care" implodes, what next?

This week's New Republic has a very thought-provoking article by former NEJM editor Arnold Relman. It takes on some of the issues in health care finance and "market-driven" health care, and discusses why the new fad for CDHC (consumer-driven health care) is likely to end in the same morass of poor quality and shady deals that investor-owned managed care has (as often illustrated on this blog). CDHC is based on the same failure to understand why health care is not just another industry that led to the managed care fiasco. Worth a read, and discussion of his proposed solutions. Maybe the solutions are realistic, maybe not, but at least he has a realistic handle on the problem.