We are living longer than ever before. We are healthier than every preceding generation. Each passing year yields powerful new therapies and wonder drugs. And each passing year brings a new low in public satisfaction with health care in both the United States and Canada.

We remember the halcyon days of the family practitioner, the black bag and the home visit, the long and intensive check-ups in which doctors were literally hands-on. Why does it seem like health care costs more and delivers less? Why does health care seem today, for all its wonders, so broken?

When you bring it down to the most basic level, people ask three things from their health care providers: affordability, accessibility, and high quality.

These three factors are essential to a properly functioning health care system. And yet it is becoming harder to get these three elements in one package. You can easily find one of them, often two. It is increasingly difficult to get all three - health care that you can afford, that is always available, and is high quality.