Everyone knows our health-care system, superior as it is in so many ways, is too expensive, too bureaucratic and wasteful.

Basically, we hand over about $2.2 trillion each year to hospitals, insurance companies and government paper-pushers -- and then we let them micromanage our health care like we are helpless babies, not rational consumers.

Everyone also knows by now that Canada’s “free” national health care system -- like its sibling socialistic systems in Britain and France -- is a just another Big Government fraud.

So can any wealthy, modern country get health care right without resorting to socialism? Yes.

You never hear it touted by the media but Switzerland uses market forces, not government rules and red tape, to create a private, affordable, high-quality health-care system for its 7.5 million citizens. And it spends 40 percent less per capita than we do.

Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, a fervent fiscal watchdog and a practicing physician, knows all about the Swiss system. Much of his proposed health-care reform bill -- the Universal Health Care and Access Act -- is modeled on it.

Coburn’s plan, a major overhaul that can be found at coburn.senate.gov, is complicated, controversial and in no danger of becoming law anytime soon, if ever.

The bill's key elements include achieving universal health-care access by using tax credits to pay for individual or family insurance, phasing out reliance on employer-based insurance, allowing people to choose their own doctors and health insurance and stressing preventive care.

On Wednesday, Sen. Coburn explained why he likes the Swiss system, which operates sort of like our car insurance: You must buy health insurance but you can choose among many plans from many private companies. Continued...