This is what I understand from listening to CNN about Obama's proposed healthcare-reform program:

1. 93% of all Americans have some form of healthcare coverage.2. 80% of all Americans with healthcare coverage are happy with the coverage they have.
If I heard correctly, Obama's plan would extend coverage to 97% of all Americans, and will cost an estimated $1 trillion.

Part of the plan to pay for the healthcare-reform plan is to levy a tax on healthcare benefits that employers provide their employees; these benefits have heretofore been untaxed. Obama also says that he will not sign any legislation that increases the tax burden on the middle class.
Now, I am as certain as I am about anything that there are middle-class Americans who get healthcare benefits from their employers. Many of these folks make too much money to be exempt from paying income tax.
Taxing the healthcare benefits of middle-class, tax-paying Americans represents an increase in their tax burden. If Obama holds true to his promises - and nothing he has said so far makes me believe that he will - he cannot sign the bill into law, even if it were to pass both houses of Congress today. Yet he has told us that the healthcare crisis is so immediate - so gargantuan - that it actually jeopardizes our standing as a world power.
Thus we are faced with the prospect of spending ONE TRILLION DOLLARS (that's one times ten to the ninth power - a 1 with nine zeroes following) - above and beyond the billions spent in soi-disant "Stimulus" spending, leaving us with a deficit unparalleled in modern times - to increase the percentage of Americans with healthcare coverage by FOUR PERCENT (4%).
*Someone* tell me where this makes sense. Someone PLEASE perform a cost/benefit analysis on this proposal and tell me where it makes sense.
Now, in fairness to the President, a lot of people have called this proposal "Socialized Medicine", similar to what they have in Europe and the UK. (And before someone pipes up, no, the UK is NOT part of Europe; Britons are not Europeans, and they will tell you so very quickly.) Obama's proposal cannot legitimately be called Socialized Medicine because it fails the test of Socialism.
Socialism arises when the State takes control of the means of production in some industry. The Soviet Union (more correctly called "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") was in fact a Socialist state because the State controlled all industry directly. The State set production quotas for factories and farms, and assigned people to work wherever people were needed. (The Soviets used to brag that they had no unemployment; if you didn't have a job, they'd give you one - even if it was sweeping the street. No one likes to talk about how little anyone got paid, or how low their standard of living was - and remains.)
Obama's not proposing that the US Government assume direct control of the American healthcare industry; merely that it provide a healthcare plan for everyone. Uncle Sam would establish categories of diseases, injuries, and conditions, and decide how much he's willing to pay for each one. This isn't all that much different from what Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Kaiser Permanente does with their health plans.
The difference is that BC/BS and KP actually *negotiate* with the various hospitals, clinics, and doctors over these rates, and if the doctor doesn't like the deal he or she doesn't take it. What happens if a clinic decides it won't accept ObamaCare? Does the Healthcare Czar send troops? I don't know, but I suspect that there will be substantial pressure brought to bear to make the errant clinic fall into line with Obama's wishes.
There is a word for having the State exert its power over Business to make Business do what the State wants it to do, and to threaten penalties for non-compliance: Fascism. As in Benito Mussolini.
Now, the Left in this country has done an excellent of raping the English language (forgive us, Will Shakespeare!) and abusing it to further its agenda, but nothing they have done to the dictionary rises to the level of their expropriation of the meaning of the word Fascism. Call someone Communist, and the Left will rail against you unmercifully, calling you a "red-baiter" and summoning the ghost of Senator McCarthy; call someone a Fascist, and he's convicted.
Fascism it is, though, and Fascist is the agenda Obama is proposing. He wants to use the full might of the United States Government to foist this unnecessary "solution" on what is arguably the best medical system on the entire planet. He says it will protect our standing as a world power; that it will bring desperately needed medical care to the millions who daily pine for it; and that it's by-golly the right thing to do.
Oh, please. No, really - please. As in PLEASE WAKE UP FROM YOUR LIBERAL TOTALITARIAN MASTURBATORIAL FANTASY AND SMELL THE COFFEE!
You think the Canadian healthcare system is wonderful? Fine; go live there. While you're there, ask your Government-owned MD where he would take his child for a heart transplant; like as not he will tell you Johns-Hopkins - which is here in the Good Ol' U S of A.
You hold up the British Public Health Service as a paragon of efficiency? I know where you can get a nice flat in Huntingdonshire. Just don't fall and tear your ACL; you may be in a wheelchair for months waiting for a repair.
Love German medicine? I don't know much about the German Bundesgesundheitamt (Federal Health Office), but I do know something about German doctors because I grew up across the street from a gastroenterologist who moved here from Germany.
Wilhelm's wife, Imme, complained bitterly for years about being here. She hated America and longed to return to her homeland. Finally, Wilhelm sat her down and explained it to her thusly: She could stay here in America - in Huntsville, Alabama - and live in her spacious, well-appointed, beautiful multi-thousand-square-foot brick home, sending her children to the finest private school in town, and driving her Mercedes or her BMW, or they could pack up and return to Germany, where they would live in a 4-bedroom apartment with no closets (they pay taxes on every room with a door, so no closets - only wardrobes), the kids would go to school with all the Muslim immigrants who were causing such trouble, she could ride the bus wherever she wanted to go (and riding a German bus in the middle of summer is worth your life, because water costs so much they only bathe twice a week), and he could earn $50,000.00 per year instead of the $500.000.00 he was making here.
She shut up and never breathed a word against America again - not the longest day I knew her.
The American healthcare system is not broken. It's not perfect, but it's not broken - not by a long shot. But if you're just hell-bent on improving it, I'll offer some suggestions.
First, make anyone who sues a doctor, clinic, or hospital pay the defendant's legal costs if they lose. This will drastically curtail the frivilous, baseless lawsuits that bedevil the industry and drive malpractice-insurance premiums through the roof.
Second, limit the elegibility for damages that a physician may have to pay under malpractice, unless that physician is found criminally negligent. (Fact: In Alabama, an Obstetrician must maintain malpractice coverage for TWENTY-ONE YEARS after he or she delivers his or her last baby, because under our laws the parents of an infant born damaged due to malpractice can sue the attending OB until the child is eighteen years old, and the child can sue on his or her own right until his or her twenty-first birthday.)
Third, pass laws establishing individual medical accounts (similar to IRAs) and make those funds tax-deferred. Let consumers draw from those accounts and make payment directly to healthcare providers and pharmacies without paying taxes on those funds. If they take money out for a non-medical reason, tax that withdrawal at 10%. Make those funds transferrable to surviving family members without tax penalty.
Fourth, get the Federal Government out of the way by returning healthcare issues to the various States and let the local powers deal with the issue. Congress has usurped too many powers from the States in violation of the Tenth Amendment, and it is time to return those authorities to their rightful owners.
The market can handle these things, but Uncle Sam has to get his grubby hands out of the way.