A report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based organization devoted to finding ways to improve the nation's dysfunctional health care system, found that family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance could increase another 94 percent by 2020.

If costs continues on the current path, this would bring the average premium to $23,842 per family.

The report notes that between 1999 and 2008, the cost of such insurance increased by 119 percent.

In Wyoming between 2003 and 2008, the average cost of premiums for single persons rose 25 percent, while increasing by 32 percent for family coverage.

Left unchecked, such escalating costs merely guarantee that many small businesses will either drop health insurance coverage altogether, or go broke trying to provide it. Forty-seven million people in the U.S. without health insurance could soon turn into 60 million.

I recently visited with a woman from Great Britain about her country's health-care system, which has been much maligned during our domestic health-care debate.

I asked how many people in Great Britain have lost their homes due to medical bills. She looked at me as if she didn't understand the question.

None, was her final answer.

In the U.S., 60 percent of personal bankruptcies are related to health problems, according to a study in the American Journal of Medicine. People lose their homes all the time because they or a loved one had the misfortune to become seriously ill. In a study of homeowners going through foreclosures in four states, a Harvard study found half were in such dire straits at least in part because of a medical problem.

Is this who we want to be?

As is frequently pointed out, Great Britain has a socialist health-care system. But so do we. It's called Medicare, created by the federal government and open to people who are eligible for no other reason than they are 65 and older.

Comes to that, our Social Security system is European-style socialism right down to its lederhosen. It was taken from the playbook of Germany's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

Bismarck, a Prussian aristocrat, was called the "Iron Chancellor." His right-wing credentials were impeccable. Even so, Bismarck's opponents branded him a "socialist" for backing such a program, just as President Franklin Roosevelt would be years later.

"Call it socialism or whatever you like," Bismarck said. "It is the same to me."

In 1935, the United States adopted its Social Security Act. So how about a bill from any politician of either party to repeal Social Security, that paragon of socialism? Now that would be a real profile in courage. And political suicide.

Question for the bonus round: More than half the land in Wyoming is owned by government, whether federal, state or local. Does that make Wyoming a socialist state?