No thanks. I will worry about my own health and health care and pay for whatever health care I receive out of my own pocket. At some point, if the government becomes too onerous and demands more of my money to pay for other's care, I will seriously consider taking myself and my money to some other part of the world and look at the great American social utopia experiment from afar.
Obviously there is a significant difference in the way you and other people view an ideal society. Those of us who favor some form of universal care, do want to see everyone covered, even if it costs us more personally.
I could not in good consciousness condone a mother losing her child because she couldn't afford the needed medicine or treatment to save her son. I know that our country is made up of diverse individuals with very different capabilities and not everyone is going to be able to work for a mega corporation, with wonderful benefits, a 401K and sustain a two parent family unit.
Most other industrial countries agree with me, and their citizens feel an obligation toward their fellow man, and are willing to share in costs even when it costs higher wage earners more in order to provide basic health care for everyone.
Read T.R. Reid "The Healing of America" It outlines the health care system other countries have adapted across the globe to insure everyone can receive health care when needed. We are the "only" industrial country country that does not. Heck even poor countries like Mexico have a government low cost insurance plan available for it's citizens.
Yes we have fiscal problems, and health care has become very expensive, but all the rest of the countries faced the same problem and figured out a way to do it. I think it was Taiwan (don't hold me to it) that was one of the last to join the fold. They formed a committee and decided to travel to many of the other countries (Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, England etc. etc.) and look closely at their health care systems and made up a list for each country of what was "good" about their system (worked) and what didn't work with their system. Then they came home and put together a plan that adapted what "worked" for other countries and made sure to avoid what did not.
The Medicare system is broke, because the government is only covering seniors who are inherently sick and the insurance companies get the younger population, who are generally healthy, and make record profits. Now what might happen if the government was able to use some of that profit to offset the expense of the elderly?
I think we would be able to balance the scale a little better.
The point of all this being, that most other countries consider it a moral obligation to care for one another, and they think it would be morally wrong to deny health care to someone because they did not have sufficient income to pay for it.
Now if you think that being an American exempts you from the rest of the world and humanity, then there is little more I can say on the matter Perhaps "American Exceptional ism" at it's best.
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