The health care mess in the United States is a top concern of voters. Too many Americans find that, despite their best efforts, they are unable to provide quality health care for their families. Too many Americans live in fear that an illness might leave them destitute. Too many Americans spend years sacrificing to pay skyrocketing premiums only to discover that, when the need arises, their policies offer protections that are next to worthless.

Most of us agree that it’s simply not right that so many Americans, sincerely trying their best to provide for their families, are at the mercy of a phalanx of greedy insurance companies, medical malpractice lawyers, health care corporations, and other profiteers that have used decades of influence in Washington to institutionalize their chomp hold on the public jugular.

What would Americans think, then, of a member of Congress who introduced legislation, not to improve health care in the United States, but to improve health care in Mexico?

Insane? Drunk? Unworthy of public office?

What would Americans think, then, of a bill introduced in Congress that required federal agencies to come up with a plan, not to expand health coverage in the United States, but to expand health coverage in Mexico?

Impossible? Unthinkable? Wildly irresponsible?

What would Americans think, then, of the motives of a senator, who not only introduced a bill to improve Mexico’s health care system and extend coverage to a growing population of 120 million people, but gave health insurance companies the right to help devise the plan?

Blatantly corrupt? Grossly indifferent to the well-being of the American people? Downright treasonous?

Unbelievable as it may seem, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005 contained a provision giving insurance companies the right to help devise a plan for extending US health care to Mexico (Sec. 1004. BINATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE AND HEALTH INSURANCE).

Even more unbelievable, the senator who sponsored the bill is not on the verge of being thrown out of office for this odious piece of legislation. No, the senator who introduced the bill, Senator John McCain of Arizona, is on the verge of locking up the Republican nomination to be our next president.

Damn! How come you didn’t know that before you voted for John McCain on Tuesday, you ask?

You’ve been watching the all-day-every-day TV news coverage of the primaries.

You’ve been reading your local newspaper’s daily coverage of the races for the parties’ nominations.

You are an above-average-informed voter.

You know that

• large majorities of young people and black people support Barack Obama,
• a majority of white women over the age of 40 support Hillary Clinton,

• a majority of Christian evangelicals support Mike Huckabee,
• John McCain’s Republican supporters are moderates,
• Barack Obama has doubled his support among southern white males since South Carolina,
• Mitt Romney has financed much of his own campaign,
• Iowa is lily-white,
• Fox News cable television didn’t have enough room in its studio to include Republican candidate Ron Paul in a debate between the Republican candidates it televised,
• Republicans hope Hillary wins,
• McCain is the only Republican who can win in November, and everyone, even Democrats, respects his history as a POW,
• Rudy Giuliani’s strategy to skip the first few primaries and focus on Florida was a bad one,

• Oprah Winfrey supports Barack Obama, and not just because he’s African-American,
• Arnold Schwarzenegger supports John McCain, but his wife supports Barack Obama,
• Robert DeNiro supports Barack Obama because Obama makes him "believe,"
• Ron Paul raised a record amount of money one day a couple of months ago,
• large majorities of Latinos support Hillary Clinton,
• Mitt Romney unhiply riffed on "Who Let the Dogs Out," and
• the top vote-getting position for an American presidential candidate this year is to be for "change."

But you didn’t know that the only clear front-runner in the race to be our next president proposed, in the last session of congress, a bi-national health care system to be devised by insurance companies. To be devised by insurance companies, for crying out loud.

Eight years of George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and the Wall Street Journal’s “GOP stalwart,” Jack Abramoff, have left the Republican Party in such a tattered mess that its future is in doubt. But (and you’ll know this if you are a well-informed voter), anti-Bush Republicans are supporting…John McCain!

I don’t know. Maybe we’re too stupid to have a democracy.

Oh, and, by the way, all you Barack Obama supporters—before you start feeling all superior: while no one can deny how exceedingly important it is to elect a president who supports change—especially one that has the ability to make Robert DeNiro believe—there may be one characteristic Senator Obama possesses even more salient, if you can imagine, than the incidental fact of his father’s skin color: Barack Obama co-sponsored John McCain’s health-care-for-Mexico legislation.

S. 1033 The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005