Already on Our Way

The libertarians are right about one thing -- we already are well on our well to universal health care. When you add up the veterans, active duty military, government employees, the elderly, the incarcerated, the poor on Medicaid, the disabled, etc., a large percentage of U.S. citizens do already receive health care paid for by the government.

This writer from an Oklahoma College paper thinks it's 60 percent. I think that figure actually is how much of the $2 trillion price tag is paid for by our tax dollars, not the percentage of people getting care. Remember that 80 percent of the cost is eaten up by the sickest 20 percent of the people -- many of whom are indeed already getting subsidized care.

What we're fighting over is whether the rest of us should not only have to pay for that, but pay through the nose to get substandard coverage for our own families through extortionary private for-profit health insurance.

The Oklahoman writer posits that this is a fiscal and moral crisis -- a good way to put it.

And the sad thing is that we're already paying for universal health care. We're just not getting it.