The marriage of national health insurance and la médicine libérale in France: a costly union.

In France, as in the United States, the problems of controlling health care costs are seemingly intractable. The incongruity of private provision with public financing is traced to adherence to competing and contradictory policies-solidarity and liberal-pluralism. This "marriage" of ideologies has been costly, and efforts to stem rising prices have resulted in political stalemate.