Yet, that's how everyone else did it. Every time I hear "But it won't work here" I know I'm being bullshitted. With all the successful models and the various components of each that we've got to pick and choose from, "It's too hard" falls flat on it's ass - deservedly.

If we do get some sort of public option, along with the obligatory "reform" of corporate insurance, they'll starve the public system of funding, ensure that it's difficult to use (and even harder to implement) and make the rules and regulations so convoluted you'll need to bring your attorney to every appointment to discuss treatment and billing with your doctor's attorney as both study an encyclopedia of rules and regulations.

We don't have to re-invent health care, we simply need to borrow the best portions of programs that have already been implemented in those countries with socialized medicine. To those who would say "We can't afford it" I would say "We're already spending more per-capita than any other country in the world. "Per-capita" means "per person", so there's already enough money in the system to cover every man, woman and child in the U.S. with "first dollar" (no deductible) medical care."

What we can't afford is the 30%-40% the insurance companies skim off the top for denying care, in addition to the cost on the side of doctors and hospitals fighting those same insurance companies for payment. Reasonably, it could be expected to cost doctors and hospitals an equal amount (or more) to fight for those payments, so it would follow that a minimum of 60% of our health care dollars are being spent on denying health care, collection, administrative fees, advertising and outrageous CEO bonuses.

Tell me, what is it about the U.S. that makes socialized medicine unworkable in the face of so much evidence? I'll shoot the arguments down one by one, guaranteed. In the end, it all boils down to the desire of the insurance companies and their minions in Congress (making every lame excuse imaginable) to maintain the status-quo of profit margins and bloated re-election coffers. Only the people lose.

Without the insurance companies, we could not only afford health care, we'd be in the black.