Have you read Atlas Shrugged?
Hey, hey! That kind of literature will cause unrest among the masses...
Might I also recommend at the risk of being rounded up by the secret police Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises. All you'll ever need to know about liberty, democracy, the state and economics lies within those two authors' easy-to-read works.
As a side note I hope everyone who's posted in this thread (all intelligent posts, might I add) steps out of the box a bit to see that this topic, along with others like it, is like analyzing the moves in a pro-wrestling match.
The game is rigged. The table is tilted. We're only ever given the choice between pre-selected options and if you don't choose it's chosen for us and that is no choice at all.
We find ourselves in a hole and are given the choice between a rope and a ladder. And as we argue about which one is the better option no one ever stops to ask how we got in the hole in the first place.
It's a very slow, gradual process to create these holes. One never realizes they're sinking. Slow enough that each generation believes that "this is the way it's always been." Eventually, everyone around prior to the changes dies, unable to attest to the failures of the changes or simply forgets how things used to be.
Health care is a commodity. It's a good and a service. No one has a right to anyone else's goods or services for free. That's either slavery, if no one pays, or theft if someone else's money is used to pay.
I find it quite interesting that people seem to believe that health care is something that's so important that we must make sure that no person goes without it but I can think of at least one thing that is more important than health care: food. Surely food is more important than health care. I have not needed health care for years but I have to eat every day or I will die.
So why is it that if one claims that because something is so important the govt must step in and manage its production and distribution they do not suggest doing the same for something ostensibly much more important, like food?
Surely, using that logic, food is far too important to be left to the free market. What guarantee do any of us have that the supermarkets will be stocked? That the food producers and supermarkets won't collude, cartelize, create a monopoly where we are forced to pay every last hard-earned cent for just enough food to live? That there will be a supermarket near anyone? That the food will taste good and be safe?
You'd hear those familiar arguments from the socialists that those barbaric capitalist pigs don't even guarantee food for their people! They are at the mercy of rich and greedy robber baron food producers who control the food supply and can exploit the people any time they want to pad their already fat wallets!
Except you don't hear those arguments because all those people quickly starve to death when the govt nationalizes food production. And the supermarkets here always seem to be full...
Secretly, everyone knows that food actually is something so important the govt can't be let anywhere near it's production and distribution because anything and everything govts have ever managed becomes a disaster. But it's like they keep going back to an abusive spouse not wanting to admit something is seriously wrong, thinking "this time, it will work--I know he loves me."
Govt has never been a good solution but always comes packaged as such at just the right time. Funny how that works.