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President Obama said today that the Canadian system wouldn't work in the United States, while warning Canadians that their system would be painted as a "boogeyman" in the upcoming health care fight, the AP reports. It's worth noting this because it highlights Obama's double talk on the health care issue. We have him on record in 2003 saying he supports a single-payer health care system, which is what they have in Canada, and even as president he's continued to say that single-payer would be the ideal system if we were starting from scratch. In speeches, he talks about how other nations are getting better value for their health care dollar, and he's even lied repeatedly about how much less costly other systems are when compared to the U.S. system. In other words, there's ample evidence that he thinks other countries' government-run systems are better. Yet at the same time, he is saying that those of us who are criticizing other nations' health care systems are engaging in scare tactics, and he keeps saying that he supports a "uniquely American" solution. But the problem is that if he refuses to acknowledge that he wants to move us toward a Canadian or European health care system, the flip side is that he now has to explain how he's going to save money without implementing the same sort of spending controls and rationing that other systems rely on to contain costs.