Families USA is getting a lot of mileage out of their latest line of argument, which is that nobody should have to pay more than 10% of their income in health care. It is getting plugged by the Arizona Star, which says asks readers to "Imagine that everyone you encounter today — at the gas pump, the video store, the grocery — is struggling to pay for health care."

Imagine, on the other hand, that everyone you meet is being harmed--through reduced wages, job lock, soaring premiums, and rising public debt--through the dysfunctions of our current health care system, in which government spends nearly half of all health care dollars, regulates it to death, and displaces individual ownership of health care dollars.

Other bloggers on this site, including Sarah Brodsky and Linda Gorman have taken on the report from Families USA, so I'll stick with an observation about the comments section of the Star article. In it, you see the "blame the foreigner" game.

A large portion of the public--it's been a while since I've read these stats, which I've forgotten--believes that foreign aid makes up a substantial portion of the federal budget. It doesn't, and instead comes in at no more than 1%, and probably well under that.

Likewise, several of the people who left comments on the Star web site blame illegal aliens for the problems in health care financing. I don't know how representative these people are of the public as a whole. But I suspect they are not isolated voices.

Illegals in Arizona may be a net negative on the state's economy (then again, perhaps not). Regardless, they are at most a minor portion of the reason why health care costs are rising and people are becoming dissatisfied with the status quo. The effects of illegals are swamped by those of the federal tax code and our reliance on "fourth-party" (the employer pays the premiums to the third-party insurance company) financing.

Of course, it's a lot easier to complain about the foreigner.