HEALTHCARE  (CONT)

That doesn't even take into account the tens of billions of dollars spent each year by Medicaid just to figure out who is eligible and who isn't.

The beauty of this system is this: Very little change would be noticed by people in the current private delivery system or by users of health care insurance, and it's politically viable. When the Pew Research Center in 2003 asked Americans if they would support universal health care even if it meant rescinding Dubya's tax cuts, 72 percent said yes, including a majority of Republican respondents.

Once the Big Business lobbyists start to study this thing, my prediction is the Republicans will get serious about backing it. No more health care costs? CEOs would snap at it like bass to a fat minnow.

We'll see, of course. The current non-system has so many special interests involved that anything could happen. But almost anything is better than the status quo.

John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years.

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