Houston, we have a problem!

That famous phrase uttered by the commander of the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon set off a textbook example of problem-solving. And as with any problem, the very first step is to be sure you know what the problem is before attempting to solve it.

In the case of Apollo 13, the problem was that a good portion of the command module had just blown away in an explosion. The crew was headed away from Earth toward the Moon in a crippled vehicle and the problem to solve was how to get the crew back safely to Earth.

So it is with healthcare. Before we do any factfinding, let's be sure that we understand the problem we're trying to solve. Simply put, America has a healthcare system which is too expensive and is getting more expensive at an alarming rate.

Just how expensive? Here are the annual per capita healthcare costs of some other industrialized nations: New Zealand ($2454), England ($2992), Australia ($3357), Germany ($3588), Netherlands ($3837), Canada ($3895). The average of these is $3354.

What's the figure for the USA? Our annual per capita healthcare spending is $7290. That's 217% of the average of those other countries.

Well, that might be worth it if we are receiving superior medical outcomes for the additional money. Except we're not. Our life expectancy is 78.7 years. The average for the other 6 countries is 79.8 years. We have about half the number of doctors per capita as the average of the other 6 countries and only 60% of the number of hospital beds per capita. On a wide range of measures of the quality of healthcare, we come in 6th out of the 7 countries.

Oh, there is also one other matter: We have over 30 million citizens with no health insurance whatsoever. We are the only industrialized nation on the planet where someone can go bankrupt because of medical bills. In fact, the majority of our bankruptcies are due to medical expenses, and more than 50% of those in bankruptcy due to medical bills have health insurance.

Houston, we have a problem!

We've all lived through the struggle to produce a law that will begin to reform our healthcare system. It will not be our purpose to relive the political fights of the last few years. Instead, our purpose will be to clear up some of the misinformation abroad in the land so that if we are going to argue about healthcare during this election season, we at least argue from the basis of correct information.

I've been doing some painting over the last few days. Painting is boring and so I've been listening to talk radio. The number of people calling to share misinformation has been mind boggling. Before finishing this post, let's address just one of these pieces of misinformation.

One caller today repeated something I have actually heard three times in the past three days. "I bet you didn't know that when you sell your house there's gonna be a 3.8% sales tax because of Obamacare."

That's true ONLY if a) your income is over $200,000 individually or $250,000 for a couple AND b) the capital gain--not the sale price--on the sale of the home exceeds $500,000. Estimates are that this exempts about 97% of U.S. home sales.

We'll examine other misinformation--from both sides--in a couple of days.