We won't be able to solve the healthcare crisis until we address the tension between the two:
Comparing costs and benefits may be rational, but human risk perception is not. The way we judge danger, and figure out how to keep ourselves safe and alive, is not a purely fact-based, coldly objective process of cognitive analytical reason. It is a subconscious, instinctive, emotional process, the principal objective of which is not to serve some greater common good, but to keep each of us alive. The ‘thinking’ part of our brain may accept that the system can’t afford everything for everybody, but the thinking part of our brain is only one part, and not the most influential part, of the way we figure out threats to our health and safety. Ultimately risk perception is a mix of the facts and how those facts feel, and the brain puts more emphasis on the feelings than the facts.
The Dish 