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chickentribs,
no harm done. i'll attempt to answer your points as best as i am able.
1. this seems to assume that i am in favor of maintaining the status quo as a measure to address the arguments for universal healthcare. i am not. changes must be made for our system cannot support this curious sort of prolonged privatized socialism that you alluded to.
the solution isn't to federalize the hemorrhaging already in place... it's to throw a dang turniquet around the whole idea. we live in a society that lives beyond our means. social programs have coddled us, shielded us (for now) from the consequences of our actions. in a nation of so many televisions where 10 lane highways are jam-packed with automobiles transporting a single person and food is dumped into the trashcan by the pound... there is no reason why people can't assume responsibility for their own healthcare. we can't have it all, or rather, we aren't entitled to it all.
i love that our country is an unrivaled economic titan. but, we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our blessings. that includes helping those who cannot help themselves. when government assumes that role, only fraud and corruption will ensue. we have an obligation to ourselves to be disciplined enough to make the right choices with our resources. we must fashion our society in a way that rewards those who make good decisions. giving people free (and by free i mean "not necessarily earned) will only bring our society to a more depraved sense of personal entitlement.
2. again, i choose not to pay for those preventable maladies. if someone was convinced that the government would bail them out of any medical crisis, would they be more or less likely to get regular checkups versus having to pay the chemo bill out-of-pocket? how many cars would have their oil changed regularly if the government decided everyone "deserved" a car?
you mentioned rand... you won't find me defending her strict objectivist philosophy. however, she does have some valid things to say about human nature.
i think my sig makes me a bit of a lightning rod at times.
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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
~ Winston Churchill
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