by Rick Shepard

Created on: December 17, 2009   Last Updated: December 18, 2009

“Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.” - Richard Lamm, CPA, Attorney, and former Democratic Governor of Colorado.

Anything's possible, but is it probable or even economically feasible? Given the Washington power structure, universal, government-controlled health care is definitely probable. The real question is its practicality.

Its always helpful to use the basic family structure as an analogy when discussing large societal issues, since a nation's simply a collection of families. Let's say you have a couple teenagers in high school and college is just around the corner.

Your employment situation's shaky due to your employer's mismanagement and a less-than-robust economy. Your employer also doesn't offer health insurance to its employees. Your spouse has been taking care of the children and running the household for the last few years, finds it enjoyable and is undoubtedly good at it.

Additionally, your aging mother has fallen a few times in the last couple years, and your father's forgetting where he parked his car at Wal-Mart more frequently. There may be expenses involved there.

One day as you rifle through the mail, you come upon a brochure selling a health-care plan. The brochure espouses the obvious benefits of their plan and its savings. But there's one catch. To qualify for these benefits you must purchase 3 year's coverage up-front, at a cost of $12,000.

After doing a little calculating, you figure your out of pocket costs, with dental visits and eye exams, annual checkups, and a couple broken fingers thrown in, to be $3,000. Well, you say, $9,000 is a small price to pay for the peace of mind this plan would provide so it sounds like something you want to do.

You sit down and go over the budget with your spouse and after the house, cars, food, a night out every couple weeks, there's not much money left. Yeah, you've talked about quiting smoking and that 12-pack you haul home every 4 or 5 days does add up financially, but do you really want to stop. Ouch!

So, since your savings are depleted you head down to your local bank to get a loan. What? A loan for an insurance policy? Well sure, this is such a good deal, and the kids could work their way through college and maybe get scholarships and grants, even though little Timmy and Susy's grades haven't been the best this past year.

You sit down with Steve, your friend

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