Described by the NYT as “a veteran health care expert who oversaw the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for the first President George Bush and advised Senator John McCain in his presidential campaign last year,” Gail Wilensky tells the paper:

… the entire health care system should stop paying doctors an individual fee for each service they provide patients — something experts say encourages over-treatment and waste — and alternatively, for instance, persuade them to join together with different specialists to offer an array of services for one lump sum.

The NYT adds:

This idea is widely supported by conservatives and liberals alike, but no proposal to set up this new payment system has gained attention.

Why not? In what kind of twisted world do we live, where a “widely supported” idea does not “gain attention” or traction? More importantly, why do voters tolerate such negligence? The answer — as the larger NYT article suggests, based on the reaction of certain disappointed conservatives themselves — might very well be this: Because we’re too pre-occupied arguing about baseless sound bites.