Alarming words. But they're not borne out by the facts in several other countries that have nationalized, single-payer healthcare. The doctors report that they're happier and so are the citizens in many of the countries with government-run single payer systems. And their costs are significantly lower than we're paying in the U.S.

This is the kind of stuff we hear at the noisy town hall meetings that get people all upset, but bears little relationship to the subject we're talking about. What does the post office have to do with health care? The U.S. Postal Service has been a privately-managed GOC (government-owned corporation) for years. Other similar GOC's are Amtrak, the TVA, PBS, the FDIC, Exim Bank, the Federal S&L Insurance Corporation, almost every water company in the country, etc.

Other than oversight, the Congress has little to do with the operation of GOC's. Someone explain how using the USPS as an example has any predictive value in projecting what might happen under a government-owned health insurance company?

Until we start really thinking about this situation and rejecting the statements being thrown around by either political partisans or special interests with their own agendas, we'll never understand what's going on in the efforts to reform healthcare.