The growth in health-care entitlement spending is driven by the special interest that has the most to gain from coercing taxpayers to spend more money on health care: hospitals. Hospitals’ political and economic power, and their exaggerated reputation as pillars of their communities, has ensured that every health-care debate has ended with hospitals receving greater taxpayer subsidies than ever before. There is no industry that is, collectively, a bigger crony capitalist in terms of taxpayer funding than hospitals – not even the defense industry.