For a over a year, a great portion of the American polity has dedicated its time to addressing those two statements. Thousands of speeches, millions of pages of text and who-knows-how-many bytes of data have been generated to express the feelings of those on both sides of the aisle. Our political system has ground nearly to a halt amidst the debate.

Health care reform is not a new issue. Teddy Roosevelt sparred with his opponents on the topic over century ago. Harry Truman tried reforming the system. Bill and Hillary Clinton tried it. Since we’re still talking about it, I think we know just how much success any of those folks had.

Whenever health care reform is talked about, Republicans respond in an almost Pavlov-style manner. Immediately we start talking about the evils of the Canadian and British healthcare systems and about the loss of American freedoms. Some even go a step further and claim as blogger John Vecchione writes in a recent post, that there is no health care crisis and when nations make universal health care a goal it also makes conservative parties unconservative.

Such claims amount to sticking one’s head in the sand and defending a system that really is undefendable.