One of the favorite tactics of the health care lobby is to circulate stories about health care gone awry in other countries. With little effort, one can find equal horror stories about Americans who have had poor outcomes under the American system. Often, the foreign stories involve denial or long waiting. In our country, a person without health insurance gets to suffer denial, long waiting and the bonus of going bankrupt if they do get treatment.

Many sources of information are available that rank health care in various countries. The World Health Organization has very complete statistics that indicate our country ranks very poorly in terms of dollars spent and outcome achieved. The typical European country, Canada and Japan pay about $2,000 each to insure everyone in their country. The average American pays about $8,000 and has various deductibles. Forty million Americans have no health care coverage.

The American health care system has now put the United States at a competitive disadvantage. Toyota recently decided to build its newest plant in North America in Canada. Toyota cited the lower cost of health care in Canada as one of the major reasons it located there. General Motors cites health care cost as one of the major reasons for its bankruptcy.

No one but the special interests and the wealthy benefit from the current system. All the statistics indicate universal coverage outperforms the current system. As the propaganda war heats up, the scary stories will proliferate and the special interests will tell us we cannot afford health care for everyone. Meanwhile, our economy will slide under the economic burden. People will continue to work past retirement age because they cannot afford health care, and this will deprive young people of good jobs that would enable them to pay taxes that would support better health care.