What would work in the long run is bringing market forces back into the medical care system. Medical costs began to rise much more rapidly in the middle 60s when the government subsidies came on line in a big way. Subsidize anything, and demand and costs will go up (see also things like college costs.)

Unfortunately, realistically, that horse may have long ago left the barn, particularly in a population trained to be economically ignorant. I suspect if I took a survey asking if gas prices should be capped at $1.00 a gallon, 80 percent of respondents would agree. It's depressing, but there it is. Basic economics is a lost art.

So, if I grant the assumption of socialist inevitability just for the sake of the discussion, how do you nationalize health care with as soft a landing as possible?

As I mentioned elsewhere, other countries have come up with a wide variety of solutions, often using a mix of public and private, sometimes public only. No two nations are alike. For example, did you know Swedish health care is funded by local taxes and highly decentralized?

A solution for the U.S. would have to be unique, and based on what we have now.

I threw Art a "who pays" question. This is actually quite critical.

Idiots will tell you "tax the rich," or "raise cigarette taxes." We both know this amount of money would be lost in the noise. Even the cost of the war would pay for only about a month or so of a universal medical care system.

So what do we do?

Right now, most private health care is being funded by companies paying for insurance. If you are going to ease over to a government system, the main source of funds at first should come from business fees/taxes. This may sound odd coming from me, but you want to minimize the alteration of the flow of billions of dollars to prevent economic upheaval.

If you try to do this with a payroll tax, i.e., massive increases in the Medicare tax, millions of employees who formerly perceived their health care as being cost-free--remember, the key word here is "perceived," will march on Washington and burn it to the ground.

Also, you would have to assume that all businesses who had the insurance burden lifted from them would pass all their savings on to their employees to help with the new taxes. Right.

Better to just cut to the chase, and create a business tax. Most businesses already have money budgeted for health care--you just move the expense from one column to another. Leave the existing Medicare payroll tax in place for the rest of it. Maybe you can slowly phase it into a payroll tax alone over many years. Or go the other way. Given years to work with, you can shift the tax anywhere it might work better.

But if you want to start it out, that's the way to do it. You deflect asteroids a fraction of a degree. You don't stand in front of them and try to stop them in their tracks.