From a conversation with someone else, on health care reform. His position was that "this "reform" isnt the best solution, but do we have a better one?"

Yes I have a better solution. America has a better solution too, but politicians (lawyers) are not listening.

First, there are only two ways to lower prices in an economic market. You either lower demand or you increase supply. (And by the way, the health care "reform" increases demand while not increasing supply - a guarantee to raise prices). The best (and only) way to increase supply in this market is to deregulate health insurance so that you are not limited to a geographically designated supplier. Allow insurance companies to compete nation-wide, with less restriction, and prices will come down.
Second, significant, comprehensive reforms (limitations) on health care litigation. Large amounts of medical costs go to malpractice insurance. If there were caps on punitive damages, and deterrents to frivolous medical law suits, then that would also lower prices.

Third, do you really think that an insurance CEO who makes 35 million (or 350 million) is 'that' affected by one person's "sick aunt"? Please - he is affected on a macro scale, and you are using micro anecdotes to plead your case. If the insurance company was shafting people, and those people had the option to go to a different insurance carrier (see point 1), then Keynesian financial laws would enact the strictest punishment on that CEO and his company - people would leave his company for a competitor, and that company would go under.

Finally - what you are saying is that "This isn’t a great solution, but since we don’t have a better one, we will use it." That’s a limiting statement, saying there are no other alternatives. We do have alternatives; we are just choosing not to explore them.

This is populist politics. Us versus them. Rich versus poor. Main Street versus Wall Street. All of that rhetoric has only one point, and that is to secure votes for the next election for the politician saying it. Populist politics should be scary stuff! People can be stirred into a frenzy easily, and then what? Populist propaganda has led to so many terrible things.

How about a few more quotes? Five cents to the person who can identify who stated these familiar sounding lines...

"All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people. "

"It is not truth that matters, but victory."

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
"The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”
"The day of individual happiness has passed."

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."

As a hint - they’re all the same person. Except for this last one.

"The tree of liberty must oft time be water with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike."