IMO, we have a peculiarly unattractive tendency here to sacrifice our future for the sake of our past. (I've written about that here extensively).

Take a look: seniors are getting a drug plan while about 1 in 4 kids have no healthcare plan at all.

That said, isn't it remarkable that all the anti-national healthcare lunies fail to see what's right in front of their faces? The most successful healthcare plan in the US is Medicare, a federal program. The most ironic thing I saw during my roughly 6 year hitch in HMO's was that the Medicare fee schedules were used by private HMO's as a benchmark for them to measure how successful they were in "holding down healthcare costs." Remember? That's what HMO's were supposed to do. "Private Enterprise is best(tm) at that." Run it like a bizness and all will be well, and vastly more efficient.

Trouble is, the best ANY HMO in the US could do was run at about 118% of the Medicare schedule (they faired far worse here in the Midwest where the best they could must was around 140%). So, I guess bizness wasn't as good as the government at containing costs, was it?