“Now, let me zero in on #3. Because I think that health care is a major, major portion of why we spend so much time complaining about not being that much better off than we were in the 1970s. Contra “99″, health insurance hasn’t declined dramatically since 1973. Since 1987–the earliest year for which I could quickly lay my hands on census data–the number of uninsured Americans has skyrocketed from 12.9% to 15.9%. If we look only at native-born Americans, the numbers have been essentially unchanged since 1993 (again, the earliest census figures I could find). In 1993, 86.3% of native-born Americans had health insurance; in 2005 that figure was 86.6%. All of the increase in uninsured has come from immigrants . . . and I don’t think they’d be better off getting their health care back in Guatamala”. –Megan Mcardle, deputy countries editor of the Economist, writing in Asymmetrical Information