Massachusetts' move towards providing everyone with health care cover has got many people throughout the USA thinking along similar lines. The USA spends a much higher percentage of its GDP on health care than do Canada, Britain and Japan - countries that provide universal health care for all.

In the United Kingdom, health care - doctors' visits, operations, follow up treatments, are all free. Even prescriptions are heavily subsidised. Nobody pays more than £6.50p (about $11) for a doctor's prescription (whatever course of drugs the doctor wrote on that piece of paper will cost no more than $11). Many pay no prescription charges at all: the unemployed, those earning below a certain amount, everyone under 18 and over 65, pregnant women and some others. The United Kingdom spends much less, as a percentage of GDP, on health than the USA does. Many in the UK complain about their health service, but the level of satisfaction is higher, in general, than in the USA. British people can, if they want, also take out private health care policies - those who do have the right to use both, their private policies or/and the National Health Service.

Many developed countries provide universal health care and they all do it for much less (as GDP %) than the USA does without universal cover. Those countries do not have the problem of major companies, such as GM, nearly going bust because of their medical cover bill.

Whether the USA ever does get a national health service is another matter. Health insurers make lots of money. Republicans stick to the ideal that the private sector can do a better job - despite the fact that about 50 million Americans have no cover at all (more than the whole population of Canada). In 1987 the numbers stood at 31 million. There is an incredible amount of waste in the USA - partly because hospitals are paid for what they do, rather than how well they do it. There are many more cases of medical errors and incompetence reported in the USA than in other developed countries that provide universal health care.

We get hundreds of emails at blog from elderly Americans who say that each week they have to decide whether to go without their medications or just eat less or turn down their heaters - something that does not exist in most developed countries that provide universal health care.

Massachusetts sent a shockwave through the private sector health care debate when its Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, made a deal with the State Legislature (controlled by Democrats) to provide health care cover for 'almost' everyone.

Perhaps the time has come to put idealism to one side and focus on what is best for a nation and its people overall. Idealism never did the Soviet Union any good.