FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT HEALTH CARE

More health care is not necessarily better for you — in fact it could be worse. It certainly drives up costs for insurance companies, who are neither as malevolent nor powerful as you might think. And the whole staggeringly complex system is the accidental product of a series of discoveries and decisions made over decades, each well-intentioned and positive, and each only tangentially related to the other.

No matter where you stand on the issue of healthcare reform, no matter how much you think you know about it, you will learn something — probably a lot of things — from This American Life and NPR's two-part report. It should be required listening for ever member of Congress, indeed, every American. We're all victims of this dysfunctional and unsustainable monstrosity, and we're all helping, most of us unwittingly, to keep it alive.

Part one, More Is Less, explores the counterintuitive but compelling argument that we get too much care. Part two: Someone Else's Money, explains why there's a kernel of truth behind the seemingly callous assertion that patients don't have enough "skin in the game." Both hour-long episodes are available for streaming or download. — Frank Lewis