Do you remember that quaint Evil Empire that stretched across much of the world; the one where countless millions were enslaved, without opportunity or hope?

Well, I have news for you.

Those huddled masses weren’t completely hopeless, poor, or disadvantaged.

If you interview Russians who grew up during the age of Glasnost, you’ll learn many of them had it pretty good. Free health care, a living wage while they studied in universities, and a guaranteed job thereafter, if they excelled, were commonplace.

Indeed, many who have immigrated to the land of opportunity, America, simply cannot believe, for instance, the primitive state of our health care system.

Waiting in an Emergency Room, hour after hour while they bleed, they recall with wistfulness how hospitals were only mere blocks away, staffed to the gills with highly educated and competent physicians, not illiterate assistants, who couldn’t contain their enthusiasm about assisting them.

Doctors in the Russian Federation, I hear, still make house calls and prepare medicines and curatives on the spot. No visits to drug stores, by the sick and infirm or their time-strapped relatives, are required.

Having spent hour after hour with loved ones and friends while they have languished for want of treatment, I can’t help but wonder why America can’t fix its broken health care system.

When increasing amounts of our national wealth are sunk into health services each year, the output of this sector continues to worsen.

Isn’t it time to do what England, Canada, and even the Russian Federation have done, and declare this sector, and the health of their people so significant, that they cannot be left to the pharmaceutical companies and the medical education establishment to control?

Lester Thurow, the Dean of the Business School at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said when it comes to health care, “We’re all socialists.”

We don’t care if our fellow citizens receive the best care imaginable, as long as we share in the privilege.

What do you think?