re: #325 Escaped Hillbilly

What say you?

I’m actually extremely conflicted about it. (Yeah, I know, someone on a political blog that isn’t 100% convinced of their own opinion! Shocker.)

The small-government purist in me rejects any attempt to expand the government into medical care. But on the other hand, there seem to be a lot of practical arguments for single-payer that make sense, and I’ve spent a lot of time in countries where it seems to work quite well.

Philosophically, I would much rather see the government providing single-payer health care than something like social security. If you don’t save for retirement, that’s your own damn fault, but the need for health care is (arguably) independent of personal responsibility. And as you also pointed out, there are many things (like the pre-existing condition problem) which can really only be solved by risk-balancing at the highest, collective level.

However, despite all that, the pragmatist in me knows that there’s no chance in hell you can simply yank 15% of the entire US economy out of the hands of the private sector and place it in the hands of the public.

So yeah, quite conflicted on this one.