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For instance "government" overhead for managing medicare is apparently very small compared that of privately runned health insurance companies.

Medical overhead is reported in percentage terms. However, the average cost per person on Medicare (usually old people with lots of medications, etc) is substantially higher than the average person on private insurance. A quick search finds this:

In 2003, says the study, the average medical cost for a Medicare beneficiary per year was $6,600. The average medical cost for someone with employer-sponsored health insurance was $2,700.

So Medicare could be half as efficient per person as private insurers and still be more efficient per dollar.

Grow up, go to state college

You mean like the ones in Texas whose tuition increased by leaps and bounds? (Compare to the yearly % change in the cost of health care graphs at the bottom of this page. Sure is beating inflation around here.) Newsflash for you buddy, just like how people going to school now can't get the same 3% rates you could have gotten when you were in school, state schools aren't the cheap deals they were when you graduated from them.

Now, quit gumming on your cane, put your teeth back in and get back inside, your friends are waiting for you to start their bridge game.

This is interesting (from this article)...

Medicare describes administrative costs as a ratio of processing costs divided by claims. In 2003, says the study, the average medical cost for a Medicare beneficiary per year was $6,600. The average medical cost for someone with employer-sponsored health insurance was $2,700. "Because of the higher cost per beneficiary," writes Matthews, Medicare's method of calculation makes administrative costs, albeit unintentionally, appear to be lower than they really are."

Also, I've heard that part of the reason that (for example) drug costs are higher in the U.S. is that in other countries there are price caps, so that the U.S. is effectively subsidizing foreign health care systems. If the U.S. also enforced price caps, the drug companies may decide to abandon some drug research because they don't think they will recover the research cost.

As I see it, free market competition almost always works best for the most people. The best way to "fix" health care in this country might be to introduce some competition.

Uhh...so are airplanes. And so are cars. And both have gotten better much faster than trains.

The increase in accidents (if any, do you have some evidence?) is probably due to the increase in the number of flights. But per person travelling, air travel has gotten safer every year.
The cash injections are because Congress loves to give out other people's money. It's also making the airlines fat & lazy, more like a government entity. It would be better to let them go out of business and the efficient airlines (like Southwest) would dominate.

The insurance industry and medical industry are broken, because of government interference. In the 1950s, very few people had or needed health insurance, they'd pay their doctors with a check. It wasn't until the advent of Medicare in 1965 that insurance became a requirement. Part of this might be because doctors began padding the bill now that a third party was paying (as they now do when we pay with our private insurance), but much of it is due to the increased costs associated with the government's control of the industry.

Some interesting facts:
In 1999, Medicare was $212Billion.
In 1999, Medicare fraud was $13.5Billion
That's over 6% lost, just to the fraud they know about, before taking into account the HHS buildings, the cost of paying thousands of HHS employees, the cost of collecting all the tax money, the costs employers have to bear to comply with medicare, the costs health care providers have to bear, etc., etc.
Hardly an efficient organization.

...because, after all, price==quality.

Some random "web development" site

Scroll down a bit to get to the chars per line bit

All of these basically agree that more than 80 chars per line is quite hard to read.

Here's an example of why not to privatize

Wealthy Canadians come to the United States for surgery. Why? They don't want to wait for months when they can afford to go to a nation where you can get surgery now. Capitalism will always be more efficient than socialism.