Let's go back a couple of years. As the 2008 presidential campaign began to gain momentum - somewhere in 1965, or so it seems - the drumbeats for round 2 of universal health care began in earnest. We were once again treated to the hyperbole of "an unprecedented crisis," of "national disgrace," of "winners and losers in life's lottery," and so many others.

And yet, the exact number of uninsured and underinsured underlying the crisis seemed to change faster than the models at a fashion show. It was almost as if Sen. Joe McCarthy was resurrected to give us the definitive number.

But sheer numbers never did tell the whole story - they never do. The prophets of doom count on you not being interested enough to look for the real truth. They count on you reacting emotionally to big numbers and supporting whatever they want to do to "fix" a horrendous "problem."

In that way the lack of incontrovertible truths and the presence of fuzzy facts stay lost in the rhetoric.

Some people truly cannot afford health insurance. Some people who are young and healthy could purchase insurance but do not. Some people have insurance but do not have enough to cover either extended conditions and illnesses or catastrophic situations. Others have pre-existing conditions that preclude partial or any coverage.

And then there is the issue of millions of illegal aliens without any health insurance.

But that's just the smokescreen because if the push for universal health coverage had been just about the uninsured and catastrophic coverage, health care initiatives would have been able to fix that - far more easily, at a much lower (affordable) cost. But we were told that wouldn't work. It was necessary to fix the entire system because the accompanying problems included the evil insurance industry that controlled so much of the system at the expense of all of us.

If we didn't fix that, the additional millions of people who could become insured under that system would be under the same thumb of the nameless, faceless clerks who make decisions about their health care. It would be far better to have those nameless, faceless clerks working for your beneficent government, wouldn't it?

Let's talk about insurance for a moment. Insurance is essentially shared risk. Commercial companies sell insurance with limits on coverage - just like automobile and household insurance policies. They limit coverage partly in order to have predictable costs.

An insurance company that continually pays more in benefits than it receives in premiums will go out of business. Insurers are in business to make a profit - a profit that is shared with their investors.

The companies are not evil. The investors are not evil. Indeed, if we listed the public and private pension plans that hold investments in insurance companies, it would likely take up much of this paper.

Nevertheless, the government wants to eventually become the primary insurer - or so President Obama said years ago.

The American people are not dumb. Poll after poll reflects the public's suspicion with the slash and burn approach to fixing health care. It's unclear exactly who is going to be covered. It's unclear how this is all going to fit together. It's unclear how much it will cost. The promised transparency into the process has not materialized.

In spite of the misinformation from all sides on this debate, it is still a fact that a majority of citizens believe the eventual solution will result in lower quality and higher costs. And we have an elitist, intellectual president, arrogant advisers, and a power-driven legislative branch majority who blithely ignore "we the people" because they are convinced they know better.

The loyal opposition is not blameless in this situation either. The Republicans have allowed the liberals to totally define the health care argument - to our detriment. Conservatives could have and should have offered their own concrete proposals to assist in insuring the uninsured; to provide catastrophic coverage for the situations that bankrupt families; and some coverage or reimbursement for care provided to illegal aliens.

Regardless of the partisan rhetoric, you can't ignore that hospitals, cities and states cannot continue to absorb the bill for illegal aliens.

The bottom line is we're going to get health care reform of some type. But we don't even know what that really includes; and we won't know the whole story until months or years after the bill is signed. We do know several senators' votes were purchased with buckets of our bucks for their states. We do know that unions extracted concessions that protected the generous insurance members their members enjoy.

And every one of those concessions means that money is going to have to come from somewhere else to pay the enormous bill that is predicted. As best I can tell, the only group that didn't get any health care concessions was Pack 26 of the St. Louis Boy Scouts.

I wish I could believe liberals truly want to help to help the American people. Those are the words they use, but their actions always seem focused on buying votes and consolidating their power. The health care buffoonery certainly hasn't given me any reason to change that impression.

Well, that's what's been on my mind.