What do you have to lose? Fill out a form, submit some basic information to the government, and in a few short months you could be fully covered!

That's the deal being offered to the 600,000 uninsured residents of Oregon right now in an effort to begin solving what has become a national crisis. Currently 16 percent of the US population lives without health insurance.

The odds are pretty good, by a lottery's standards: about one in one hundred. The state says it has enough funds to insure 24,000 people, but 17,000 of them are already guaranteed coverage because they were on a previous plan that covered 132,000 people before budget cuts reduced that number to 17,000.

That leaves 7,000 spots. And originally, the program was meant for low-income people and those who do not qualify for Medicade or Medicare. But since more than 130,000 people in the state meet those criteria, and it's impossible to prioritize illnesses, officials have deemed an open lottery the best solution. The plan is still intended for those who truly cannot afford their own policies, but doesn't that describe just about everyone who isn't insured? Insurance is expensive, and if your job doesn't pay it for you, that probably means you're also not making a whole lot of money.

It might sound simplistic and naive, but seriously, why can't we just allocate some of that $12 billion we're spending in Iraq every month to covering our own population?