Universal Health Care

Our annual benefits enrollment period just ended.  In 2007, an employee at OU will pay $780 a month out of pocket for health insurance to cover the employee and family with a $500 per person and $1000 per family deductible.  Some of our secretaries make less than $20,000 a year.  Many jobs at OU pay in the $30's and 40's.  And, I suspect that starting faculty salaries in some departments aren't much more than that.  For most of these folks, I would think $9360 a year for health insurance is cost prohibitive.

I would think that health care is a basic and common good of the society.  If this is the case, there ought to be some way to offer every person in the United States affordable health care (maybe not a Mercedes level but at least a Chevy quality) while maintaining proper market incentives for health care providers and proper disincentives for those inclined to run to the doctor every time a child sneezes. 

What do others think?  Does our Catholic faith require us to favor some form of affordable universal health care?  I am sure that any consensus would break down when we moved from the principle to the implementation with some of us preferring greater freedom in the market and others preferring a more centralized government plan.  But, I am interested in knowing whether we have a consensus on the principle. 

Thanks, Michael S.