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Yea, I know: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/how-to-fix-executive-pay/2009/07/scrap-stock-based-compensation.html

You apparently do not understand how senior manager are paid in a public corporation - their rewards are DIRECTLY tied to the performance of the company's stock.

I know, and an important step in moving away from maximizing shareholder value and the quarterly earnings game is to move away from that. This article from HBR talks about it:
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/how-to-fix-executive-pay/2009/07/scrap-stock-based-compensation.html

Yep, I know, and it is far from good! We need to move away from maximizing shareholder value! The good news is from what I read, there seems to be a movement to change the MBA curriculum to fix the problems. I read the http://blogs.hbr.org/ every day now, and it has some articles on these problems, some of which I have even submitted to Slashdot.

Cost more, yes. Gets less, I don't think so.

Overall cost of health care is up because the tests, treatments, and medications that are now mainstream are all dramatically better than they were not all that long ago, when they were prohibitively expensive and rarely employed. They are used more widely now because they are less expensive (economies of scale), and, after all, nobody wants sub-standard treatment.

Absolutely provably false.

Harvard Business Review published a piece on this recently. It uses raw data to compare the US health care system to other developed nations. It's conclusions:

Americans realize amongst the poorest health outcomes of developed nations. Americans have the lowest life expectancy amongst developed nations -- 78.1 years, compared to 81 in the UK, and 82 in Switzerland. [...] And America has the highest infant mortality rate -- 6.9 deaths per 1000 live births, compared to 5.4 in Canada, or 4.7 in Belgium.

The numbers are preliminary, but suggest a visible trend. Where survival rates have increased in other countries -- sometimes significantly -- in the US, cancer survival rates have dropped over the last two decades.

Americans pay more for healthcare because they trade more expensive products for less service, realizing poorer outcomes. Why? Because that is what maximizes near-term profits along the value chain. [...] Healthcare in America is a textbook example of thin value. The healthcare industry maintains significantly supernormal profitability -- yet, those profits are divorced from people being relatively better off. An American healthcare industry that "creates value" by limiting how much better off people are is simply transferring value from society to shareholders.

(emphasis theirs)

The article also goes on to state that most pharmaceutical companies spend over TWICE as much on marketing as they do on R and that the gap between R&D and marketing continues to grow. By moving to a government single payer health insurance system, the pharmaceutical industries would have to forego their ~20% annual profit margins and live with profit margins in line with the state of the economy.

The outraged opposition from "Real Americans" to public health care is entirely a manufactured product, supported by those who have interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

On a personal note, I talk with some friends from Europe on a regular basis about this, and they don't really understand the fuss, or the need for insurance to be involved. One friend from Denmark summed it up by saying "If you're a citizen, you pay taxes and get health care. If you're sick, you go to the doctor, you get treated, the doctor sends the bill to the government. The end".

As opposed to my current situation, where the Family Practitioner that my family has been going to since my son was born (the OB/GYN that delivered him works there) is now suddenly not covered by my insurance company - EVEN THOUGH the insurance company's own website says that certain doctors at the practice participate, and EVEN THOUGH we have previously had coverage for things performed at the doc's place. We got a bill for over $500 for a STATE MANDATED health checkup for my son that was required before he could enroll in Kindergarten - not a drop of it was covered. My employer stepped in and reimbursed me for a portion of it, but told me sadly that they couldn't fight the insurance company and that I'd have to change doctors.

We need health care reform. The Right Wing in Washington opposes it. They will fight it at any cost, because it cuts into their backing funds from the insurance and

I know, I have been doing research on the problems of shareholder value and agency theory for a while, I even submitted articles to Slashdot and Reddit about it. We need to move away from shareholder value! I most recently read about it on http://hbr.org, which has articles about the problems. I even submitted one of them to Slashdot and Reddit too, see my Firehose.