You focus on costs, believing that a government run U.S. system would be no more expensive than the current system, and actually cost less. But the federal government has failed to run anything within budgeted limits, and generally does a horrible job. I point to Amtrak, Social Security and Medicare as shining examples of government incompetence.

Much of the cost of the U.S. system is directly due to the intervention of government through over-regulation and a failure to keep predatory legal suits under control.

British-style medicine in the U.S? No thanks.

In 2007, the combined Federal, State, and local government expenditure on health care was $1035.7 billion. So, we can fully nationalize health care with the US National Health Service, and cut government health care spending by about $100 billion per year at the same time. No additional tax source is needed.

Additionally, adopting a US version of Britain’s National Health Service will free up more than $1.2 trillion per year in private funds no longer needed to pay for – largely illusory – private health insurance.

Adopting a US version of Britain’s National Health Service will also save the lives of nearly 6000 infants per year – infants currently being sacrificed on the black altar of amoral corporate greed.

The bottom line is that we are already paying for universal health care, we just aren’t receiving it.

/Data from: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group; U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis; the U.S. Bureau of the Census; the U.K. National Health Service; and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.