FWIW I do apologise for the sarcastic tone of my posts above. You're right; it's probably not the right way to spark a constructive discussion. To be honest, my tone was a fairly deliberate departure from how I usually post. It's just that I've been in a number of these 'US Healthcare' discussions on HN now and have seen the same points and counterpoints made many times, yet no progress seems to have been made.

I suppose that's a good indication that I should just stay out of these threads until I can maintain a civil tone.