Does Medicare promote the seven deadly sins: avarice, gluttony, envy, sloth, lust, anger, and vanity?  Why has it created so much conflict among different types of providers and among different regions of the country?  Why is there so much emphasis on cost and access and not on the quality of care?  Why is the future financial condition of the program being ignored?

In this health policy discussion, David Hyman, professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law and an authority on health law and policy, gives new meaning to the phrase "The Devil is in the details." Judge for yourself whether you think the Devil has succeeded in the satanic scheme that he started in the mid-1960s.  Did he also play a role in the passage of the recent Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003?