[jogger08152]

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I don't see how it could still be so little.

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Amazing what the free market can do. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

The point of government intervention in the first place was explicity to raise prices. This is documented history. Prices started raising before the advancements you speak of, and that was point of the government intervention.
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The services medecine provide now, compared to the turn of last century, have increased at a rate far, far greater than inflation. Getting an MRI isn't cheap

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So have cars, computers, TVs and a thousand other products. Some how hundreds of milions of people consume them with ease. That might be different if computer companies lobbied congress.

As the article states, one days wages covered health care for a year (for lower class workers!). Even if that number was tripled, it still makes insurance cheap enough for anyone who wants it to consume.
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Ditto malpractice insurance, which I'm afraid is here to stay as well.

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Malpractice is just one example of how [censored] up government law is. I know a friend of a friend who has stopped practicing medicine because of the insurance. We need heavy reform in that particular area. That alone would lower health care and health insurance in the states.

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On this point I wholly agree with you, but (and this is important to your OP) reforms haven't come into being yet. These add expense to medecine that isn't really avoidable (now). That's part of the reason I say "I don't see how it could be so cheap." There are certain costs, like MI, that are going to keep the overall expense high until/unless they are changed. (Malpractice insurance is a good example of a very bad cost; MRI machines are the opposite.)