With a cover headline that promises to show readers ?How to Take Charge Of Your Health,? you might expect that the latest print edition of U.S. News & World Report would focus on the advantages associated with consumer-driven health care.

Not exactly. But the magazine offers some positive signs that suggest its editors have at least an inkling of the problems associated with proposals like ObamaCare.

First, Brian Kelly?s editor?s note demonstrates that he has not yet swallowed the Kool-Aid to support current ?reform? proposals blindly:

We also look at Washington, where a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar (give or take a few hundred billion dollars) piece of legislation is moving through the system. Do not underestimate the size of its undertaking or its importance to everything from the nation?s economic well-being to your own disposable income. Will it work? At what cost?

While Kelly asks questions, editor-in-chief Mortimer Zuckerman believes he has answers:

Save the cheers for the looming healthcare ?reform.? It looks more and more like something that will take us over a cliff. ? Laudable as it will be to cover more people with public and private insurance, the worm in the apple ? the giant serpent in the apple! ? is that numerous inflationary forces already make our medical care system unsupportable, and therefore unsustainable, and the ?reforms? will literally threaten the fiscal health of America.

Meanwhile, the magazine’s lead news story reminds us that ?reform? offers no guarantee of better health care:

Getting the best care in a system steered by black-and-white medical guidelines ultimately set and enforced by faceless governmental bodies will not be easy, especially for the passive patient unwilling to engage or question the system.

After the gloom and doom, I?ll end on bright note: There’s a generally positive article about ?cash-only? and ?direct-pay? doctors:

Across the country, there are now 500 to 1,000 family medicine practices operating on a cash-only model, estimates Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. ? The cash-only model is based on the idea that rather than charging higher so-called retail rates for uninsured patients while negotiating discounted rates with insurance companies for covered patients, it?s fairer ? and possible ? to offer reasonable rates to all.