If we medicate enough people, maybe no one will notice that we are destroying the one sector of the economy that is producing jobs. It would seem this must be the secret hope spinning through the minds of many politicians, as they get set to knowingly vote the nation into an economic emergency ward.

Admittedly, something needs to be done. The current health-care system is a shambles.

There is a solution. But it is not any of the plans currently being pushed. Nor is it the status quo. It is a real health-care revolution.

Politicians are seemingly so concerned with your health that they want to require everyone to be part of a publicly funded health-care plan. Sounds great! Yet, ironically they themselves will not be victims of the new health-care plans they are forcing on everyone else. No public health care for Capitol Hill legislators; they get to keep their current government health-care plans. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the new plan does it?

The new proposals look bad. When I say Americans will be “victims,” that is exactly what I mean—victims both physiologically and economically.

Consider Canada. Whenever socialized health care is discussed, someone inevitably trots out Canada as an example of great success. Canada’s medical system has good aspects, but don’t be fooled. It also has shortcomings—and some of them are big.

Consider last month’s example. When Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, on June 27, not a single neonatal intensive care unit was available in the whole province. Thus the 2 pound, 4 ounce, newborn had to be air-lifted to Buffalo.

Canadian columnist Mark Steyn points out that Hamilton is a city of half a million people, just down the road from the 5.5-million-strong Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s largest city, which is within Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, which has 13 million people. But the entire province was unable to offer the same level of neonatal care as Buffalo, a post-industrial ruin in steep population decline for half a century. That would be one of socialized health care’s weak spots.

Isabella’s story is too familiar. In a planned economy, bureaucrats determine how much and what type of equipment and services will be provided—not necessarily supply-and-demand fundamentals. According to the Hamilton Spectator, the neonatal intensive care unit at Hamilton’s children’s hospital is filled to capacity 50 percent of the time—which means babies have to be sent elsewhere half the time. The hospital’s administrator says he is negotiating with federal appointees for funding to increase the number of neonatal units.

Isabella’s situation is a problem that has been going on for years. Back in 2007, in another famous incident, Karen Jepp went into labor with quadruplets, not an incredibly uncommon occurrence—but there wasn’t a single hospital in all of Canada that could handle the births. So Canadian taxpayers paid to send the expectant mother of four and husband to Montana.

A small city in Montana had what all of Canada didn’t.

There is a reason that Canadians commonly go to the U.S. for treatment.

But on the upside for Isabella Stinson and Karen Jepp, neither of them had to pay a penny for their medical treatment in Canada or the U.S.

On the surface, this might sound like a good thing—until you understand that this is the big lie of socialized health care. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays—probably you. State-managed health-care systems just give the illusion that you are getting something for nothing.

If the government is paying for it, the reality is that government bureaucracy provides the decision-making, and you provide the money. You are footing the bill—either through higher taxes, a slower economy, or inflation (when the government prints up the money to pay these unaffordable bills). And pay for it you will, because if people perceive that they can go to the doctor for free, they will tend to run to the clinic for every little sniffle or minor scratch.

There is a reason that Canadians are known for paying such high taxes—and it’s not for huge military expenditures.

But Americans will pay for national health care in other ways as well. Since the recession began in 2007, health care is the only private-sector industry that has consistently added jobs—21,000 per month on average for 2009. Every other sector (besides government employment) has cut jobs. Private sector health-care jobs are good jobs in the sense that they are not government jobs—whose salaries are paid for by taxpayers. And now many politicians want to completely revamp the one thing that seems to be at least partially working, as far as creating jobs goes.

The paying will continue despite claims that a government plan will somehow bring costs down. “[T]here is no historical precedent for such faith,” says economist Peter Schiff. “When Medicare was first proposed back in 1966, it cost $3 billion per year, and the projection was for inflation-adjusted annual costs to rise to $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion, and the 2009 estimate is a staggering $408 billion!”

The difference today is that instead of beginning with estimates in the billions and ending with a multiple-hundred-billion-dollar miscalculation, we are beginning with estimates in the trillions of dollars. For some, that’s not a big deal. According to esteemed economist Paul Krugman, the proposed legislation from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will, “in the end, add only a few percent to our overall national health bill”—only around $1.3 trillion over the next decade (New York Times, July 5). He then goes on to say that this gargantuan amount is really not very much because it is less than 4 percent of the $33 trillion the U.S. government is predicting it will spend on health care over the next decade.

But America currently doesn’t even know where the first $33 trillion will come from! The government is already borrowing hundreds of billions to balance the budget each year. And if historical precedent is any indicator, the government cost estimate of $1.3 trillion will probably end up being 10 times as much!

America is going to wish it took the advice that the Prophet Samuel gave to the ancient Israelites when they wanted to depose God as their king and put in a human king. God said He would give them what they wanted, but that that king would make them pay—and pay, and pay and pay—until they didn’t want to pay another tax, ever again (1 Samuel 8:10-18).

Yet the famous New York Times economist is not worried. He boldly claims that a national health-care plan will bring “real competition to the health insurance market.” This competition will drive down costs, he says. But this is another lie.

Two paragraphs earlier in his New York Times piece, he contradicts himself by saying that the “near-universal coverage plan” will accomplish cost savings through “regulation and subsidies.” Regulation and subsidies are anathema to free-market competition. If the government-run plan goes through, then a level, free-market, competition-friendly playing field is out the window. The government will become a player (subsidized by taxpayers) in a game in which it is also referee (regulator). Who do you think will win? Eventually, there will only be one team in town: the government’s. That makes it a government-backed monopoly.

Any Economics 101 student can tell you that government regulation, subsidies and monopolies reduce competition and efficiency. Not good things for an economy.

The truth is: You cannot add coverage for 45 million more people without paying more—a lot more—unless you degrade the service. If you believe you can, your faith violates several economic laws—such as the law of the free lunch, which is that you can’t get one. You just can’t get something from nothing.

Politicians and renowned New York Times columnists should know better.

“Where are the economists with … character today?” asks Bloomberg’s Kevin Hassett. “Apparently, the job description for economists has transformed from recommending policies that are defensible to defending whatever policies that the political hacks in the West Wing dream up.”

That may be the most insidious aspect of the proposed health-care reform. Politicians and their economic stooges know it could cripple the economy—but that is a risk they are willing to take to push their ideology.

America’s health-care fiasco has proven one thing: Mankind isn’t able to solve even basic problems on its own—despite increasing knowledge and technology. Human nature—political ideology, self-interest, greed and so on—simply gets in the way, and America swings from one extreme to the other. Yet, good health and access to health care are essential to the longevity of any successful nation. What a quandary.

However, there is a solution to the health crisis. It is God’s solution, and it will revolutionize your life. If you are interested, request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s booklet The Plain Truth About Healing.