Health care that's always there - how simple could it be?  Ideally, you would get a health insurance card. Get sick. Get an appointment with your doctor. Get the proper treatment at the hospital. Get prescriptions filled at the pharmacy. Get better. And never get a bill. That's what happens in Canada.

That's what Bill and Hillary Clinton promised us a decade ago. That's what Harry Truman sought six decades ago.

Instead of simplicity, however, America now has the most complex, corrupt and costly system yet devised by human minds. Built by the shrewdest MBA's, accountants, lobbyists and lawyers available, America's health insurance system is a vortex sucking trillions of dollars from consumers, employers and governments at all levels.

Operated by executives intent on making money the truly old fashioned way - cheating customers, conspiring with competitors and corrupting public officials - this system inflates premiums and arrogantly says "everyone has their price!"

And from hideaway offices in the U.S. Capitol to cramped hearing rooms in state capitols, from insurance conglomerate boardrooms to state regulators' cubicles, a dirty little secret is shared. "Our price has been paid in full," they whisper.

As a result, Americans pay more ... and more ... and more for health care.

Premium $hock - the double-digit increases for health care coverage paid by employers and increasingly passed on to employees - is dragging down an already depressed economy.

There are lots of great ideas - some initiated or implemented by the IAM and its employers - about what can be done to control costs and more equitably share the economic pain.

A radical proposal - Congressman DeFazio's bill to repeal the McCarran Act - deserves more attention and debate.

But one thing is certain, until a comprehensive and national level solution is found, and found soon, Premium $hock will continue to flat-line working families and the firms that employ them.

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