Poker players call it the “tell” – a subtle, nonverbal signal that your opponent is holding a really good hand – or a really bad one. Recently, the health care industry dropped its poker face just long enough to let us all know just how lousy the hand they’re holding is.

According to this article in the New York Times, the White House announced on May 10 that representatives of the health care industry had agreed to major cuts in the rate of growth of health care spending. A letter addressed to President Barack Obama said in part, “We will do our part to achieve your administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate, saving $2 trillion or more.” The letter was signed by representatives of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a lobbying group for manufacturers of medical devices; America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobbying group for insurers; the American Hospital Association; the American Medical Association; the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association; and the Service Employees International Union.

Notice industry representatives didn’t pledge to cut the cost of health care. They pledged to increase the cost of health care – just not by as much as they were originally planning to. And almost as soon as the announcement was made, industry representatives began backpedaling furiously.

Too late, the cat’s already out of the bag. This is an astonishing announcement, virtually admitting that their industry is pulling the prices they charge out of their asses. Wasn’t the invisible hand of the marketplace supposed to keep that sort of thing from happening?

Of course, we all know the answer to that one. There is no free market for health care. Few aspects of our lives are more heavily regulated and subsidized. What we have is a sinister hybrid of socialism and capitalism, combining the worst aspects of both. 58% of all health care costs in this country are born directly by the taxpayers. That more than total spending on health care in all but three other countries. In plain language, we pay more per capita in taxes for health care than Canadians do. So why can’t we have the kind of health care Canadians have?

The answer to that is easy. What’s wrong with our health care system is the same thing that is wrong with our banking system, our higher educational system – we socialize the costs and privatize the gains. The government collects the taxes and distributes the money to the health care industry, which then has an obvious vested interest in pushing as many expensive and invasive treatments on people as possible. Then this becomes the standard of care, driving up the price for everybody.

In a speech to the Illinois Medical Society, then-President George W. Bush said, “One thing for certain about health care in this country, is that we’ve got the best health care system in the world and we need to keep it that way.” In fact, as the graph below shows, our health care system is almost literally off the charts due to its combination of high costs and crappy outcomes.

Source: Whither the U.S. and Massachusetts economy? http://www.northeastern.edu/dukakiscenter/publications/publications_by_format/presentation_materials/documents/Bluestone.Boston_Indicators_Workshop.031809.pdf

The fact that the health care industry is willing to promise to shave $2 trillion dollars off the price tag is a measure of just how badly they’re been gouging us – and just how frightened they are of real reform. Don’t expect them to go gently into that good night. Too much money is at stake. Expect them to spend zillions of dollars on attack advertisements -- zillions of dollars of our money – to scare us off from real reform.

But the tide may be turning. Too many people are beginning to connect the dots. Too many people are beginning to see the connection between skyrocketing health care costs, the growing number of the uninsured, the ubiquitous advertisements for hospitals and diagnostic centers and prescription drugs, and the shamefully high incidence of iatrogenic illness.We have a health care system which is making us sicker and poorer -- the exact opposite of what it should be doing.

It just may be the party’s over for the health care industry. It’s about time.