The US Health-Care System Is Flawed By Design: Editorial

The middlemen that comprise a growing share of America’s convoluted health-care system find themselves in a bind. The public is angry about the inflated costs and opaque dealings that govern their access to medical care. Lawmakers, despite recent setbacks, are eager to respond. Intermediaries have become an obvious target for blame and reform.

A sharper focus on the role middlemen play in health care is justified. But faulting them for the nation’s dismal outcomes fails to address the system’s larger dysfunction: employer-sponsored health insurance.

In the earliest days of American medicine, health care was a straightforward exchange between patients and ...