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We might just have our chance early in 2009 to make a real push to join the rest of the civilized world in providing universal health care here in the United States. We might wish Barak Obama were a little more fired up over the issuemore like Clinton and Edwards werebut he's said enough to give us hope. Now it may be up to us as citizens to make sure he and (hopefully) Congress will put their money where their mouths are. There will be tremendous special interests fighting tooth and nail against it, and it might take citizen pressure and participation to make it happen.

If little is done, it will be that old bugaboofearconstantly hatched and force-fed to the populace by the politicians and special interests who profit from the over-priced and blatantly unfair mess we now have. Let's explore some of these fears.

1. We won't be able to choose our own doctors or hospitals. Nonsense. The French, for example, have total choice in doctors, hospitals, and drugs, even experimental drugs if they
wish. We too could incorporate choice simply by choosing to do so. Yes it's true that France usually has cost over-runs of about 9 billion dollars per year. So what? That's about a month's worth of our Iraq "war".

2. Health care will be rationed.

Well, in a sense everything's rationed, including our life spans. In Great Britain, rationing means that certain unproven or experimental drugs are not covered for terminally ill patients for whom the best that could be expected would be a few more weeks of (probably painful) life. This practice reduces costs, and citizens there almost always profess satisfaction with that arrangement.

3. We don't want the government mucking up the best health care in the world.

The problem here is that we're so used to sticking our fingers in the air to proclaim ourselves number ONE, we don't even pay attention when we're not. Here's where we actually are: life expectancy24th; overall performance37th; citizen satisfaction40% (that's not a surprise considering almost 50 million of us have no insurance at all); infant mortality rate24th. But waitall is not lost. We are indeed number ONE in per capita spending on health care, more than doubling the costs of second place Australia.

4. We can't afford universal health care.

Oh please! Of course we can and in fact every industrialized country in the world does except for us and South Africa. The Dutch might teach us a few things about keeping costs down. They get off their

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