Former Bush economic adviser Gregory Mankiw discusses three "true but misleading statements about health care that politicians and pundits love to use to frighten the public."

1. The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.

2. Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.

3. Health costs are eating up an ever increasing share of American incomes.

According to Mankiw, these statements are "dangerous" because they are true, yet "don't mean what people think they mean." He concludes: "we should be careful not to be fooled by statistics into thinking that the problems we face are worse than they really are."