The New York Times has published the thoughts of five prominent Republicans on the health care question and this is good. You wouldn't catch FoxNews or Limbaugh setting out the position of the right. Responsibility for one's own ideas carries too many risks. But the care that has gone into maintaining vacuity on the right needs to be replaced with some details. Yet the details better make sense. Consider the views of Bill Frist, surgeon and former United States senator from Tennessee:

In my own field, transplantation, for example, a payer should not separately reimburse 56 different nurses, doctors, pharmacies, imaging centers and hospitals. Instead, it should pay a heart transplant team a fixed sum (adjusted for risk) based on the diagnosis of “heart failure requiring transplantation.” The disbursement of that payment would then be made at the local level, where value can be most accurately determined, and waste most likely eliminated. Health care providers could then compete on the basis of efficiency and success. Markets work. We should use them to drive behavior toward the goals of sustainable value in medical treatment and affordable health care for all Americans.

With all respect, that is not a market argument but a local governance one which still means that the recipient of services is not paying for the services. If we are interested in tapping into "the power of hundreds of millions of people to make smart choices about their health" how does that occur at "a local level... where value can be most accurately determined"? It is a recipe for thousands of small local bureaucracies, grinding value away in paperwork. Boards. Well paid executive directors. Hobnobbing.

This is not to say that the idea won't work. Of course, I don't really understand it. Nor the rest of the ideas. I'm a blogger for God's sake. Have you own look, however, and see how they, by turns, torture then claim to uphold ideological purity. Because that's the most important thing.