We do have a system of government run health care. It’s called Medicare, and most people who have it are pretty happy with it. You can call it a “socialized” system if you want. It’s semantics. We could say we have socialized highways, military, national park system, etc., but when it comes to running certain things, the government can do a pretty good job — highways, defense and national parks are good examples of programs run well. Everyone complains about the post office, but I can put a stamp on a letter for the cost of pocket change, and have it get anywhere in the country in a day or two. Try asking fedex to do that.

I know health care is expensive, believe me. The big problem is that we don’t have a free market in health insurance. The health insurance industry has had a statutory exemption from antitrust laws since just after World War II. The AMA recently published Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets, that determined there has been a “near total collapse” of competition in the market.

Want proof? In September of 2009 the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the cost of health insurance increased by over 131%, while the general rate of inflation rose by 28%. That’s why we’re paying a larger and larger portion of our salaries to health insurance. And there’s no reason to think it won’t continue. Anthem, the largest health insurance company in California, recently proposed increasing its rates by 39% People who can’t afford it will just have to go without health insurance. Anthem has the market pretty sewn up in California. Increasing competition is a capital intensive business, and entry isn’t easy. A public option could provide competition, but it doesn’t look like that’s a possibility.

I’d say that no matter how inefficient you think the government is, there certainly wouldn’t be ten year 131% increase in cost. Every government in the developed world provides universal health insurance. There are lots of different ways they do it: single payer, regulated non-profit private companies, and state provide health care. There are lots of arguments about how to do it. But the bottom line is that health care costs a lot less in those countries.

I’m not going to defend the idea that maybe health care should be a right. Instead, let me just point out a couple of things. There are lots of people who lose their insurance not out of laziness, but because they loose their jobs, or because they can no longer afford insurance, or the insurance company has decided to cut them off. “They” could be you or me, or someone close to us. Obama says that 14,000 people lose their health insurance every day. That’s an exaggeration. About 14,000 a month is generally accepted as a reasonable estimate. Of course, over the last couple of years, unemployment has gone way up, and people lose their health insurance as a result. Using National Bureau of Economic Research statistics, around 7,000 people a day are losing their health insurance in the present economy. Most of them will get it back when they get a new job, but they’d better hope there are no children with broken legs, and that no one needs to go to the hospital. Or gets pregnant — pregnancy is a pre-existing condition, and insurance companies won’t pay if you get insurance after conception.

One last point about paying for other people, the people you say are lazy or aren’t willing to sacrifice” to get health insurance. I’m not going to argue with your description, and I don’t need make any ideological arguments about human rights Let me just point out that most people and most children without health insurance do get health care. But, without health insurance, they aren’t likely to bring a child with minor health problem to a doctor. If the child gets sick enough, he or she ends up at the emergency room, getting the most expensive care money can buy for a problem that’s now much worse. The cost of that care ends up being absorbed by the hospital, and the money gets paid by increased hospital rates, ultimately paid in higher insurance rates for you and me. It’d be a whole lot cheaper to let them go to a doctor rather than a hospital, and we’d both have more money in our pockets.

There are lot of issues that people with different ideologies can disagree about. I don’t think this is one of them. It’s pretty clear that you and I and the rest of the country would benefit financially from instituting the two things that every other country has: universal coverage and some sort of price control. People in those countries get better care cheaper.

Anna Nicole Smith is still successfully dead; VP Cheney still