Truths are never lost, they just get -occasionally- forgotten. Rick Steele's reflections on managed (primary) care are a powerful testimony to this. In an age of ever-increasing hyperspecialisation in biomedical and clinical practice, of virtually logarithmic doubling of peer-reviewed health science literature every year, and of ever stronger beliefs around the pervasive nature of evidence-based health care, we have forgotten an important truth about people's health and how to care for it. Health is hardly created by the health system, which should rather be called the palliative system, or...