Sometimes, you just have to laugh. Everybody knows that politicians of all stripes excel at spinning whatever it is they want to push upon an unsuspecting public. But more often than not, while the spin is fairly obvious, there is at least a hint of reality.

Not so with the Obama administration's arguments in favour of a Canadian-style U.S. government run healthcare monopoly.

The plan, if implemented in the way President Barrack Obama has promised, would add about $2 trillion - that's trillion with a "t" - on top of the $2.5 trillion the U.S. already spends on health care - by the way, the U.S. government spends more per capita than our government does on the file.

Yet despite such enormous estimates - and history shows government estimates of program costs are always lower than actual costs - the Democrats are trying to convince a skeptical public that a government-run plan would not add to their already out-of-control deficit.

White House budget director Peter Orszag - apparently with a straight face - was quoted as saying that "The key thing is we need to get there (to a government health program) in a way that is deficit neutral."

Talk about the art of the impossible. Deficit neutral? Health care?

They should take a look at the spending they already shell out for health - and look north where healthcare, whatever you think of our scheme, is not only steadily eating up more of total federal, provincial and municipal budgets, but has more impact than any other single area of government spending.

Deficit neutral, indeed!

It's one thing to argue for a program. After all, Obama did campaign on a new healthcare scheme. But it's quite another to tell bald-faced lies in order to get your way.

Unless the Democrats are prepared to impose massive increases across the board in taxes - which, obviously, no political party would survive - then the notion of adding trillions to government spending without affecting the bottom line makes Alice In Wonderland appear real.

There is no doubt that the American healthcare system has some serious flaws. (So, by the way, does our own, despite the constant bravado from the politicians and the healthcare elite that our system is the best in the world. It isn't. Far from it. Fact is, the World Health Organization rates our program well down the list of developed nations. But we digress.

The large majority of Americans, in fact, enjoy better healthcare benefits than most Canadians do. Most have plans with their employers or buy private plans to look after their needs.

Your correspondent has several relatives who live in the U.S. and all report that their service is superior to the kind of pedestrian service most Canadians have learned to accept.

That having been said, however, there are many millions of Americans - estimates range from 20 to 50 million, but who really knows? - who do not have health coverage of any kind. Some of them chose not to pay for it, even though they can afford it. But most of those either don't have the option or can't afford what is being offered.

This is clearly wrong.

But in order to fix that serious flaw it isn't necessary to reconstruct the entire system. As the old adage goes, if it ain"t broke, don't fix it, and for the majority of Americans, as we've said, it ain't broke.

So instead of seeing himself as the author of a vast new government health monopoly, Obama would better serve Americans - and spare even higher deficits - by concentrating on government assistance to those Americans who do not have health coverage.

Leave the others alone. Their plans are working very well.

Despite claims from the White house that this massive new spending program would be "deficit neutral," the independent , non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the current Obama plan would increase deficits by a whopping $239 billion over the next decade.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country without a government-run universal healthcare scheme. Canadians love to look down their noses at that, all the while ignoring the reality that Canada is the only industrialized nation which outlaws most forms of private healthcare.

Unlike both the U.S. and Canada, all the other developed countries offer a mix of public and private and almost all of them rate well ahead of Canada and the U.S. when it comes to service and value for money.

Both countries should be pondering that reality.