Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

The new left is always convinced they are the smartest folks in the room. We hear some version of their arrogance all the time: they know better how manage our retirement dollars; they know better how to manage private industry, they know better how to deliver health care. The American people may be many things, but contrary to the tale being spun by the new left, they are not a bunch of dull-witted penny stinkers. Even when our math is poor our noses can smell a pile of political doggy doo a mile away.

The president continues to promise that this reform – the substance of which members of congress won’t read because they can’t understand it without lawyers sitting nearby – will expand coverage to 47 million people, cut prices (not costs) and improve quality without adding to the budget deficit. Politicians have a nasty habit of promising champagne and caviar and delivering cheap wine and fish bait.

The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the Obama plan would not reduce the burden on the federal treasury. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf testified to the contrary: “In the legislation that has been reported we don’t see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health costs. … [The government public option for health insurance] raises the amount of [spending] that is growing at this unsustainable rate.”

Said responsibility will cost the federal government $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years adding $65 billion per year to the deficit even with all the new taxes democrats are proposing. This of course begs the question: If in truth the Obama plan will reduce costs why must we raise taxes to pay for it?

Americans understand that under the government plan costs will go up not down and the only way government can control costs is through rationing services.

The house bill creates a new “Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research” to gather data and to determine which treatments are the most cost- and/or clinically effective in handling particular medical cases. A panel of “experts” chosen by politicians to decide what is the best and most cost effective, one size fits all treatment does not sound like better quality medical care – not to most Americans and not to the British that are suffering under the auspices of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. This is the British government bureaucracy that decides which drugs will be available for their National Health Service.

Cost effectiveness is the job of NICE and indeed the institute has a habit of denying drugs based on their cost while ignoring their effectiveness. Most recently the institute denied four new drugs to cancer patients because they are too expensive. Those drugs by the way are available to American cancer patients under our pitiful system. No doubt this is one reason cancer survivor rates in America are the highest in the world while the Brits flirt with the lowest in Europe.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the arrogance of the new left than a statement the President made during a televised (yet again!) New Hampshire town hall meeting on healthcare. Tap-dancing like Sammy Davis Jr., the President said, “If you think about it UPS and FedEx are doing just fine.  It’s the Post office that’s always having problems.” 50 million Americans all shouted to their televisions all at once, “Exactly Mr. President!” There is absolutely zero reason to believe that the same problems afflicting the government run post office will not be present in a government run healthcare system.

Democrats disparaging voters and telling those that disagree with them to sit down and shut up may demonstrate some political savvy of which I am unaware. Ultimately, however, it will never make up for the fact that they have offered a plan for healthcare reform that simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

The investigation included charges of conspiring to sell surface-to-air missiles, the sale of counterfeit currency, clothing, and cigarettes. It also included counterfeit postage stamps…yep, the Chinese were counterfeiting our 37 cent postage stamp (I’m sure now they are doing the Forever Stamp but all my connections are in federal prison so I guess I’ll have to pay for them like everyone else). I obtained hundreds of thousands of the counterfeit flag stamps packaged 100 to a roll. One postal inspector told me it was one of their largest seizures ever. I say all that because last week I had an issue with the post office and my “celebrity” status apparently carried no weight. 

I will be the first to admit I think the post office does a darn good job. I’m amazed most of the mail I send gets to its intended destination, but last week the USPS failed me. 

My wife and I were back in the Midwest on a family emergency. On Wednesday while bouncing between three states I realized I left my car keys in one state, was driving in a borrowed car to a second state, and the next day would be in a third state. I was returning to Southern California on Friday and needed the keys to drive home from the airport. Our daughter went to the post office and explained the situation. The keys had to be overnighted. They had to arrive on Thursday since the flight was leaving Friday. The post office employee was very understanding, provided her a price, took delivery of the package containing the keys to my pick-up, affixed the postage, and promised they would arrive by noon the next day. All was right with the world. 

When my wife and I arrived to the third state at five o’clock on Thursday no package awaited me. I called my daughter who provided a tracking number. We accessed the automated system and learned the post office attempted to deliver the package at 10:30 a.m. but no one was home to accept delivery. My father-in-law balked and said he had been home the entire day. Since he is a retired minister I accepted his word. We contacted the local post office and learned the package was still in state number one. The original postal employee quoted the wrong price to my daughter and affixed the incorrect amount of postage, therefore they would not deliver the package. The deliveryman went to my daughter’s house at 10:30 to get the additional postage but she wasn’t home so the package sat at the main post office in state number one, far from where I needed it to be. 

I refrained from using language I learned in the Marine Corps but questioned why they delivered first class letters with postage due but would not deliver overnight mail when it “absolutely had to be there.” The explanation was…it’s against policy. So the keys remained in state number one, that post office was closed, and my daughter could not pick up the keys until the next day, Thursday. Of course the post office couldn’t mail the package Thursday night because there was still postage due even though I agreed to pay the postage at this end. The next day when my daughter went to the main post office to retrieve the keys she sought a well-deserved refund BUT no. She needed to return to the post office where she mailed the package which was never sent. Now granted “rules is rules” but any Costco or Target will take back anything they sell at any store, seems like the main post office could at least give a refund. 

During this family emergency I also listened to people complain about the long lines at the unemployment office and the fact the FBI didn’t respond to their complaints in a timely fashion. I don’t doubt their heartfelt concerns but I did remind them the same people running the post office, working at the unemployment office, and answering phones at the FBI would be the same people deciding their medical treatment if the Democrats get their way. 

I’m sure my story fell on deaf ears but I’m checking with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his edition of Turbo Tax and maybe now I can deduct the entire cost of the trip as a business expense since Big Hollywood posted my story,

On the up side, it gave me a chance to study all the people in line.  An occupational habit, I study people wherever I go, particularly when I’m a captive to some long, slow-moving queue.  The line moved so slowly, in fact, that I had the opportunity to memorize what all 32 line-standers were wearing, the color of their hair, the shape of their faces, my best guess at their ethnicity, their height….and as I was starting to indulge myself with guessing each person’s weight and how I would do working at a carnival, my thoughts began to wander.  (Did I mention the line in the post office moved very slowly?)

I had satisfied my fill of people-study; had mentally crowned the Strangest Looking, Most Obese, Most Attractive, and The Most Likely To Use The Word ‘Obsequious’ In A Sentence…and my attention began to wander to the workings inside this post office.  I live in the San Fernando Valley and this post office is smack dab in the middle of a vast inland-empire suburban metropolis.  It serves thousands upon thousands of people…very slowly.  There were three postal workers on duty to serve the public that day.  I should say two postal workers, as one would periodically rotate out for a ten-to-fifteen minute break.  A smoke break, judging from the heavy tobacco smell that accompanied each of their returns to duty.

“Hi, How are you today?” the Postal Worker rasped, as I had finally arrived at the desk.

“Well…I’m a little annoyed to tell you the truth.  I’ve been standing in this very boring line, waiting for all of you to finish your respective cigarettes, pushing my large package along the linoleum, watching you and your co-workers slowly attend to the customers like you’ve got all the time in the world.  Like this is some sort of purgatory we’re all corporately stuck inside, nobody going anywhere; and you all seem quite indifferent to whether or not this whole sad circus will drag on into a dark and dreary bleak eternity.  That’s how I’m doing!  How the hell are you?

Nah, I didn’t say any of that.  I wanted to get out of there as quickly as humanly possible so I hoisted my large package up onto the counter.  The post-person weighed it.  I saw $32.96 appear on the scale readout.  Cool, I can handle that.  Then he measured the package.  20″ by 20″ by 26.”

“Your total is $97.50.”  Straight faced, no joke.  I stared at him until I re-entered earth’s atmosphere and managed a, “Uh…I’m sorry.  Say what?”

It turned out the weight was a thirty-six buck charge, but the large(?) size added an additional sixty-four.  The value of the contents, a broken speaker, which if it had been working right, which it was not, was still worth less that the cost of shipping it.

With a sigh I lugged the package out of the post office, trundled down the street to the local UPS station…and ended up sending my package to Tennessee for forty bucks and change.

Why am I dragging you (slowwwly) through this sad and torridly tortured tale of Fun with Postal Workers?  Yeah…you guessed correctly: If the President gets his way, the same people who run the post office will soon be running our health care industry.

How’s that for a happy thought?

I even see a possible cost-cutting consolidation:  Mail your packages, buy stamps, and have your gall bladder removed – all in one convenient location!  And since the number of doctors will decrease dramatically, hence increasing the wait time…you will be able to self-medicate with the new Easy-Does-It Gov-Care Med Dispensers while you’re waiting in line.  With the right combination, hours will seem like seconds.

The President addressed a fawning crowd in Wisconsin last month and delineated the ‘catastrophic’ consequences of not spending trillions of tax dollars immediately to fix our ‘broken health care system.’  People can’t afford health care, they’re dropping like flies, and it’s an urgent crisis.  We’ve got to completely reorder medical care in America and we have to do it immediately, or we’re all gonna die.  It’s a crisis.

Sound vaguely familiar?

But I want to be specific if I take issue with Mr. Obama.  So here goes:  The President said, “Rising premiums are straining family budgets to the breaking point.”

Oh, I see.  But…is that all families?  Half the families?  One tenth?  Fifteen-sixteenths, what?  Can you be specific, Mr. President?  And what exactly is the ‘breaking point’?  And could massively reducing taxes help at all?  Just a thought.

Obama went on, “In the past nine years, health care premiums have gone up three times faster than wages have gone up.”

Could that have anything to do with an increasingly litigious mindset and left-leaning encouragement of frivolous lawsuits in which hospitals, doctors and health care institutions are sued at the least provocation?

How about the resultant ‘ get-something-for-nothing’ attitude fostered by the Left’s welfare society of entitlement?  And what about the increasingly intrusive role of government meddling in the industry of health care and health care providers, which by all reports of those directly involved, indicates that the presence of government in the health care industry at all drives premiums higher.  I’m just saying.

The Prez continued, “…desperately needed tests and procedures are put off, because the price is too high.”

But at least we can get those tests and procedures, Mr. President, without having to wait two years, as is so often the case in Canada, or Great Britain, or New Zealand or any place socialized medicine holds its people in rationed third-world misery.

My father was a surgeon and sat on the board of the CMA, the California Medical Assoc., and was one of the board examiners who went around and inspected hospitals.  The expertise acquired enabled him to later build three hospitals himself, and manage nine more.  And I had been telling everyone I was going to be a doctor as well, since I was six years old.  But you know?  My father told me about the evils of socialized medicine and how it was creeping into our system.  My father ultimately influenced me to not go into the medical practice.  The reason:  Government had become far too intrusive in the health care industry.  And this was 35 years ago.

It’s only gotten worse since.  More and more would-be doctors are seeking other professions as the word gets around.  It used to be – you work hard, do well in a four-year college, go to med school, work your butt off for four years, then another two at internship and residency, and then, you open up a private practice.  But there’s no such thing anymore.  Because it’s not private – the government is your partner.  And more and more, the government is becoming your boss.

With fewer and fewer doctors there will be much longer waits to a) get in to see a doctor, and then b) receive any treatment.  In Britain and Canada where they have ‘free’ national health care, waiting times of two years are not uncommon to receive life-saving surgery.  And a lot can happen in that time.  Like…you can die.

The President tells us our health care system is ‘broken’ because health care has gotten more expensive.  Really?  That makes it ‘broken,’ because it’s expensive?

Health care costs in the country have risen in the past few years.  Absolutely right.  New innovation and high-tech breakthroughs cost a lot of money.  New life-saving drugs are expensive, because years of research and development are necessary to bring them to market.  The best costs money.  Don’t you pay more for a finer cut of beef at the grocery store?  Don’t you pay more for a nicer car, one that has more amenities?  We don’t have the cheapest health care on the planet, it’s true – but we do have the best health care system.  So when President Obama every other day proclaims solemnly that ‘our health care system is broken’…what the hell is he talking about?

He’s talking about controlling more and more of your daily lives.

Our health care system isn’t broken; it’s the best in the world.  I’d say our government is broken, starting with President Obama!

When foreign dignitaries get very sick or need life-saving surgeries, do they book it in Canada?  Or England?  Hell no – they come to the U.S.  The medical technology, physician expertise, and quality of medicine is the highest here than on any place on earth.  And it costs money to develop the medicines, the technology and train the doctors.  Why do people think that good things shouldn’t cost money?

And these AARP adds.  And ‘The Scooter Store.’  Granny doing donuts on her living room carpet and happily proclaiming she didn’t pay anything out-of-pocket for the scooter.  That’s because YOU all paid for it.  And I don’t mean to be harsh here, but …does Granny really need to motor around her house?  Wouldn’t her doctor agree that her health would benefit if she merely got up off her sedentary butt and walked to the kitchen.  Walked to the bathroom?  Walked around and exercised a bit, pumping life-giving blood through her extremities?  Of course it would.  Granny – God bless ya, but — Stop thinking that other people should have to pay for your stuff!

And another thing — You hear many in the news today saying, “The main problem with National Health Care is ‘How are we going to pay for it?’”  Really?  That’s like saying, “Listen we of course want to tie you up, shove a dyslexic hamster up your bum, place you upside-down in a glass tube of acid filled with scorpions and jellyfish…but the main problem is ‘How do we pay for it?’”

Uh….Forget how we pay for it – it’s a stupid idea!!!!!

Okay, Gary, you obviously have no compassion.  What about the poor?  What about the poor who can’t afford health insurance?  I would ask you for a definition of what ‘they’ can afford.  Can they afford that HD wide-screen?  Twenty-four-hour Direct-TV All Sports channel?  How about that brand new Hummer?  I know a lot of people who say they can’t afford health insurance, but manage to take three vacations a year on their boat and have more toys that I’ve ever had.

Choices.  People make choices in life.  They choose to spend their money on health insurance.  Or…they upgrade their wide screen.  Get their house painted.  Buy a new dining room set.  Or…they save up to pay for their health care insurance.

Yesterday, at yet another Town Hall Meeting, (or as I like to call it, Doctor Obama’s Magic Traveling Medicine Show), a rather rotund woman, Debbie, came up to the President and tearfully pleaded that she was diagnosed with a tumor and didn’t know what to do.  In a brilliantly staged move, the Snake-Oil-Salesman-in-Chief warmly embraced her bulk, saying that she was “Exhibit A” [of why our health care system is broken].  And I couldn’t help but remember that old TV show from the late ‘50’s…”QUEEN FOR A DAY” in which each week three women would come on and tell their sad tale of woe and disaster and deprivation to the studio and television audience.  The studio audience would then vote for whom they thought was the most deserving Queen-For-the-Day.  It was heart-rending.  One tragedy bested by yet another disaster, and finally trumped by an apocalypse of misfortune.  Tears, sad organ music, and warm, supportive love and grieving.

And finally it was announced, and the winner was crowned “QUEEN FOR A DAY”!  The pipe organ would swell as tears and applause and a robe and crown and the new Queen of Pathos was regaled with new washer-dryers, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, reclining chairs…and it was all so maudlin and sappy.  But the show was a big hit.  People tuned in to hear the sob stories and get their heartstrings tugged.  And afterward…they felt a little better about themselves.

This is the essence of Liberalism.  It’s all about feeling a little better about yourself by doing ‘something nice’ and giving something to someone else.  And I say GOOD!  As long as no one is forcing me to give to someone else.  I’m all too happy to be nice to someone else, to give to a stranger, let’s say…voluntarily. (And by the way, Americans, and in fact Conservatives, are the biggest givers on the planet.)

But you write it into law, and back it up with a gun…now we got a problem.  Liberals are very generous – with other people’s money.

So when a zillion ‘Debbies’ come to me and ask me to pay for their health care, to treat their tumors, I say…HUNH?  Why should I have to pay for your health care?  And likewise, why should you have to pay for mine?  You don’t pay for my groceries, I don’t pay for yours…and isn’t food more vital that health care?  Here’s a novel idea:  Why don’t I pay for my health care and you pay for yours?.  Just a thought.

But how about this for people like Debbie:  HEALTH CARE TELETHONS!  Televised much like the Jerry Lewis MS Telethons, each stricken victim parades forth and tells their story – straight into the camera.  And the phones will light up with pledge money.  We can have menthol drops standing by for those not quite motivated to shed real Oprah-worthy tears.  And yours truly will keep whatever we raise above and beyond what your surgery or treatment ends up costing.  And I’ll put that money in a lock-box.  To be disseminated at a time and to a recipient of my choosing.

Now doesn’t that make more sense than what the Prez is proposing?  That because supposedly 30 million in this country (largely illegal or simply opting out) don’t have health insurance, our health care system — the best, most advanced medical system ever known to mankind — is ‘broken’ and needs to be turned over to the federal government to run?

What the President is proposing is insanity.  Return the medical industry to the private sector.  That is the only way to reduce costs and keep the quality of service at its optimum.