My EPPC colleague Yuval Levin has written a post that nicely sums up why a bipartisan health-care solution will not be easy to come by. It’s not that conservatives and liberals don’t both see the shortcomings of today’s arrangements. They do. It’s that they simply have very different conceptions of what must be done to fix the problems. Liberals believe that more empowered and enlightened government management of the health sector can deliver better results. Conservatives quite rightly are highly suspicious of this contention. The government has been running Medicare and Medicaid for more than four decades, and the result has been bureaucratic regulation and price controls that make the entire health sector less efficient and productive. The conservative solution is to empower cost-conscious consumers in a reformed marketplace that rewards efficiency and value. Given the intensity of the debate over the last year, the odds are long indeed that the two sides will suddenly find an acceptable compromise anytime soon.