A couple of months ago, New York Times columnist and faux economist Paul Krugman wrote an editorial critiquing critics of Obama care, who are comparing the Democrats' health care "reform" as resembling that of the U.K. or Canada. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html

Implementing "reform" that would look like one of those two countries' health care systems wouldn't be a good thing for us.  It can take months to receive care for most cancers following diagnosis, whereas in this country, you'd begin receiving care within no more than a few days.  "Elective" procedures such as hip and knee replacements, which, although officially classified as elective, can alleviate years of misery for those who receive them, can take years.  In this country, getting a hip or knee replacement usually takes only a few months.

Krugman, however, says that it isn't so.  He says, based on one of the more palatable proposals put forward by the Democrats, that our system won't look so much like the U.K. or Canada but like Switzerland.  The Swiss have implemented a system whereby the private sector provides health insurance, but everyone is incentivized to participate one way or another.  Krugman goes on to say, "In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured."  Yes, it's true that Massachusetts is using the Swiss model.  It probably looked like a good idea to Gov. Mitt Romney when he pushed to implement it five years ago.  After all, nanny-state Massachusetts residents were pushing for universal health care, and Romney, free-marketeer that he is, saw a chance to use the private sector to solve this problem.  Even Krugman admits that " costs are running higher than expected," but how is it working otherwise?

Funny you should ask.  My wife is from Massachusetts, and one of her sisters, Maureen, still lives there.  The other day, my dear sister-in-law called to talk, and one of the topics of conversation was how bad the health care system has become in Massachusetts.  My wife saw an opening and mentioned that Obama wants to bring this magical health care system to the whole country.  Unfortunately, Maureen, deluded liberal that she is, immediately admonished her poor sister to "stop talking politics," as though stating the truth is simply "talking politics."  Maureen, if you happen to read this, please pay careful attention to the first couple of paragraphs.

The complaints about Massachusetts' new health care system seem to focus mostly on costs.  Besides the huge, and probably unsustainable, additional cost to the taxpayer mentioned in Krugman's column, due to the necessity for subsidies to much of the population, there also seem to be increased costs for individuals, in spite of those subsidies.  Furthermore, despite the program's stated goal of universal health care, about 4 - 5% of the state's residents still aren't covered.  There are various reasons for this, but it seems to be mostly due to the fact that the incentives and subsidies simply aren't enough to get people to carry health insurance  This fact is a graphic example of the principle of decreasing returns to scale, a principle of economics that points up the futility of trying to get absolutely everyone to adopt a policy that many of them don't want.  People who are still uninsured mostly don't want to be or feel they can't because they have other, better ways to spend their money. 

Set aside for a moment the morality, or lack of it, of trying to force people who are supposed to be free to buy something they either don't want or don't feel they need.  86% of Americans are satisfied with their health care and their coverage, so what are we trying to fix, and at what cost?  How much more incentive can we possibly give this remaining 4 - 5% to make them buy coverage?  There is no "answer" to the "national health care crisis;"  there are only, as in all walks of life, trade offs.  We just need to be adult enough to accept that we simply can't fix everyone's problems, no matter how hard we try, because the trade off, which is spending gigantic sums of money, simply isn't worth it.