I heard recently that 1 in 7 families are being foreclosed on due to the sub-prime lending mess.  I've read as many articles as I can trying to understand exactly how and why this is happening. Many of the articles are so convoluted and it seems you have to be almost an economic expert to truly understand the how, what, why and when of it all.

No matter how many articles I read, I just could not find out the root cause. I mean, not just bad lending practices, or questionable banks.  I wanted to understand exactly from nickel one how it happened.

Then.......I caught this piece on Crooks and Liars by John Amato and it all made sense to me.

The case for delivery of heath care services facilitated by commercial enterprises in a capitalistic based free market economy, i.e. capitalism, has been made based on the belief that the competition promotes innovation and better productivity which will improve the quality of the services provided and lower the costs. However, the requirement that high profit levels need to be maintained in order for commercial medical healthcare service providers to garner the capital investment required to provide the facilities, technologies, and resources needed to deliver cost efficient heathcare services is based on the fact that factors outside of what is considered free market economics govern the industry.  The profit levels attained by US healthcare service providers have apparently fallen short of that required to overcome the risk of making such investments in a free market economy and as a result the costs of heathcare services have escalated out of control for over 15 years.