We Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.

If you want to look at a purely socialized health care, you would have to go to the United States, where we have it. In particular, that's the system we reserve for our veterans. So if I hear politicians run down socialized medicine - and I have done that before the Congress - I say: Do you hate your veterans? Why do you reserve purely socialized medicine - there's only the U.S. and Cuba that have that - for the veterans? So getting the terms right would be very, very helpful in our national conversation on health reform.

The bad things the U.S. health care system are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors that human beings have different values depending on their income status. For example, in New Jersey, the Medicaid program pays a pediatrician $30 to see a poor child on Medicaid. But the same legislators, through their commercial insurance, pay the same pediatrician $100 to $120 to see their child. How do physicians react to it? If you phone around practices in Princeton, Plainsboro, Hamilton - none of them would see Medicaid kids.

We Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.

The bad things are that our financing of health care is really a moral morass. It is a moral morass in the sense that it signals to the doctors and hospitals that human beings have different values depending on their income status.

Americans believe that the private sector is always more efficient and cheaper than big government, and particularly when you go among Republicans, even after five beers, they still believe it. But I always say, "If it's really true, why would they need that 12 percent extra on a traditional government program? Explain to me why something that costs more saves me money as a taxpayer.".

We have a nation where the elite thinks it's OK to advocate a war and send the lower-income people to do the fighting. It's natural for such a people to think that the lower-income people should also have a worse health care experience. And the other countries are not there - I always say, not there yet. I tell the Germans and the Swiss, "You're not there yet, but if you're not very, very careful, if we Americans come over there and rearrange ... your health care system, you will be just like us."