Containing health-care costs is impossible under the current legal structure. That fact has to be addressed if President Barack Obama is to create an affordable health-care system that is accessible to everyone.

Every incentive in the system now is to do more -- that's how doctors get paid and that's how doctors get protected from lawsuits. Billions of dollars are wasted in "defensive medicine." Bureaucracy built up over decades diverts resources from patient care to mindless compliance. Forms are everywhere.

The...