Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

We are surrounded by medical miracles - polio has been eradicated; childhood leukemia is now treatable; death by cardiovascular disease has declined by two-thirds in the last fifty years. Yet while American medicine has never been better, angst over American health care has never been greater. Why is American health care such a mess? Dr. David Gratzer argues that the heart of the problem in American health care is its addiction to outmoded and discredited economic ideas. To cure this crisis, he prescribes a strong dose of capitalism.

In The Cure, he offers a detailed overview of American health care, from economics and politics to medical science - and makes the case that it's possible to reduce health expenses, insure millions more, and improve quality of care while not growing government or raising taxes. The patient is in critical condition; Dr. Gratzer diagnoses the disease and prescribes the cure.

DAVID GRATZER - a licensed physician in the U.S. and Canada - is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His research interests include Medicare and Medicaid, drug re-importation, and FDA reform. Dr. Gratzer is the author of Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System (ECW Press, 1999) and is the editor of Better Medicine (ECW Press, 2002), a collection of essays from leading health care thinkers in North America and Europe.