The belief that a nationalized health care system is basically unworkable in a nation the size of the U.S. does not mean I have a "hard heart." It means exactly what it means. Generosity does not negate economic reality.

The Social Security administration's most recent summary report on Social Security and Medicare can be found here.

There are currently about 40 million people on Medicare, and we already all pay taxes to support this program (around 3 percent of income at this point, and obviously not enough).

You can draw your own conclusions on Medicare's finances, or what these various numbers would be if we incorporated the other 260 million Americans into the program.

Solution? I wish I had one. The health insurance business took a bad wrong turn when government controls during WWII encouraged businesses to make health insurance a "benefit" (unlike most other forms of disaster insurance), and created the idea that it should be a benefit from your employer.

As far as medical costs are concerned, the U.S. pretty much dove over the cliff in the 1960s with Medicare and Medicaid, tossing market forces out the window, and a graph of general medical costs shows a nice upward bend at that point and a much steeper slope. Add to that insurance companies either deciding to cover a lot of things they shouldn't have to, or being forced into it by regulations.

Didn't take long for health care to be generally perceived as something that should be "free."

I think that nationalized health care is probably inevitable at this point. Every ratchet has moved away from a free and competitive system and toward the state monolith. The people inside the state monolith, of course, can't wait. The amount of power this would give to the government--and those corporations who will be in on the deals--is enormous.

I can think of ways to minimize the impact, but they probably won't be considered.

As I've said before, if you think the military-industrial complex is bad, wait until you see the government medical-industrial complex.