(This is the part where I quietly point out that both of these red states refused to expand Medicaid to attack these numbers or to run their own state-based exchanges so they could maintain better control of the health care law's presence in their respective states.)

I know, I know, Govs. Perry and Scott are taking a stand, refusing federal help (while at the same time inviting the feds in to set up shop) in a principled protest against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Problem is, they don't pay the price for taking that stand. I'm sure each governor — and all of their colleagues in their respective statehouses — have more than adequate health care coverage, with or without PPACA. 

(By that same token, it's easy for me to take a stand against milk when I don't drink it anyway.)

So maybe it's no wonder Bloomberg ranked the United States as a whole 46th among 48 countries in health care efficiency — based on life expectancy and health care costs. (Hey, we did better than Serbia and Brazil — and that's without nearly as many kidnappings or land mines.) Guess you could say our whole is greater (or worse) than the sum of our parts.

(In all fairness, some have reasonably argued that using life expectancy as a barometer isn't entirely fair, given this country's proliferation of mitigating factors such as guns, alcohol, tobacco and bad food.)

Either way, we still have a growing problem. In short, we spend more than anyone else, to cover fewer of our people, with a batting average that wouldn't get us out of triple-A ball.

Am I advocating for the president's plan? Absolutely not. Despite it's misleading title (that borders on false advertising) it only tackles one of the three problems (coverage) while making the second problem worse while nearly ignoring the third altogether. Besides, other ideas are finally starting to emerge.

Or maybe we should go back to the drawing board, after all. As long as we don't ignore the elephant in the board room.