Have some sympathy for our legislators: putting a legal framework around an area as tricky a healthcare is nearly an impossible task, given the competing interests of so many different groups. Democrats and Republicans in Congress present fundamentally different solutions to the problem: the Republicans advocate a free-market approach, allowing patients and doctors to set the costs themselves. Democrats prefer a single-payer system, with the United States government assuming all the costs. The Republican view was more prevalent during the administration of George W. Bush. After the election of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, that changed.

On this day, December 24, in 2009, the U.S. Senate passed the United States National Health Care Act, the first step towards creating the Democrat-preferred single-payer system.

The only point of agreement between the two sides is that some kind of reform is needed – the U.S. as a nation spends more on health care than almost any other Western nation, with little to show for it in the way of results. The people, too, are divided: polls show that on the one hand, a majority favors some government hand in bringing healthcare to all, but a much smaller number favored healthcare. Add to that the “right” of healthcare, that anyone sick can get emergency care and not have to pay, and the growing phenomenon of “medical tourism,” when people travel abroad for medical procedures at a fraction of the U.S. price, and you can see the intractability of the issue.