Virtually all of the universal health care plans in Europe cost less, cover more citizens and show better outcomes than America's private insurance-driven 'system'. Based on personal experience with health care in the UK and France, I'd be satisfied with either. But I'd take any EU plan over the exorbitant, inequitable, inefficient, red-tape-tangled mess we have here.

However, each nation's plan is different. For example, medical treatment in the UK is free; in France there is a nominal charge. Each plan has different options for supplemental private coverage. Each plan has different methods of funding, within different systems of government. And each is designed around the needs, national concerns, health care infrastructure, social traditions and democratic will of the public which supports it.

Problem is, you can't buy just a national health care system - you have to take the government, the culture and the country that goes with it. And you have to live there. So it is absurd to expect anyone to say which is "the best" health plan for someone else, any more than one can say which car is best for someone else, or which shotgun, or which wife, or which place to live.

Universal health plans are tremendously complex (as are our private insurance plans). Asking an individual for simple apples-to-apples comparisons is, frankly, simple minded. It took the World Health Organization whole teams of medical consultants, actuaries, accountants, statisticians, political advisers and economists sifting through mountains of data to analyze them in 2000, and they are all in a state of continual development.

But if America ever acknowledges basic health care as a citizen's right - as do all the other major nations of the earth - this nation has the skills and manpower to study the successes of countries which have been ahead of us for decades. To see which parts would work best within our system of government. And to craft a universal health care system that fits America's needs.

Sample my new book at http://www.theweemadroad.com