A lot of drug-users like to call themselves Libertarians, but that doesn’t make political libertarians pot-heads.

Look, I’m trying to make a point, and I’m sufficiently thoughtful and well-educated to know that it’s neither a trivial nor an absurd one. I’ll cheerfully acknowledge that there are a lot of obstacles to properly implementing and administrating a public health insurance program, but the same is true for maintaining an elite military. I still want it to get done.

Yeah, hell no. I lived in Britain for a few years – nationalized health care is a bad idea in theory and in practice.

Again, I’m NOT advocating for national health care. This is a much narrower problem: where exactly we vest the decision to give or withhold medical treatment. Setting aside leftist excesses, there *are* some things that the government should do – and if it’s not doing them well, that’s a separate issue.

I lived in Britain – and I had private health insurance because the NHS is such a mess. I said before, and I’ll say again: that’s NOT what I’m advocating at all.

Hey, you can’t judge people with a libertarian political philosophy by the freaks who claim the title as justification for their antisocial behavior. Every political philosophy has its share of nutjobs claiming membership, but you’ve gotta look past that to the actual issues.

I support Second Amendment rights, even if a bunch of crazy gun nuts do to. I support freedom of speech, even if that means supporting the speech of communists and flag-burners. And I support national health insurance because I think that falls in the limited category of stuff the government should properly be involved in – even if a lot of people I can’t stand feel the same way.

You spend a lot of bandwidth responding to a post you didn’t read. As I *explicitly* said *many* times, I am expressly *not* supporting a government takeover of health care. I am *only* talking about health insurance, which is a tiny fraction of the American economy, and I’m not even arguing the ‘seizure’ of that. Even in Britain (NO, I’M NOT ADVOCATING FOR A BRITISH-STYLE HEALTH SERVICE) there’s a substantial private health insurance industry.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to repeat myself here – maybe you’ll read a post directed specifically to you?

“You can’t claim to respect private property but then demand that the state take by force from others to provide health insurance for you.”

Hmm. Good thing I’m not doing that then.

“Insurance companies – and contrary to the Far Left, they do not as a matter of course refuse payment for treatment…”

Right. Only a small percentage of claims are wrongly denied. So … you’re okay with the fact that private individuals can wrongly cause the deaths of Americans, as long as they don’t do it ‘as a matter of course’?

“The insurance company (or whatever Left-Wing bogeyman it is) did not make you sick and has no obligation to treat you – especially if you’re not one of their customers.”

Again: READ THE POST. I explicitly pointed out that I’m NOT demonizing insurance companies – I just don’t think they should have the power that they currently hold. My friend Schmitty is a great guy, but I wouldn’t grant him the power of life or death over me. And when did I ever suggest that insurance companies should be covering people who aren’t their customers?

“And even more stupid is your belief that a government run health insurance scheme would not ever deny you payment for treatment – the news coming out of Massachusetts today already shows that to be false. And unlike it is with private insurance, you can’t sue them to court.”

At least I have a basic grasp of the English language. For the umpteenth time, neither I nor any other sane human being expects that a public health insurance program would be perfect – what I want is a citizen’s franchise in the system that makes these kinds of decisions. That’s how this whole democracy thing works.

As for not being able to “sue [a government program] to court” (sic) … yeah, you make a really good point. That’s why Oliver Brown couldn’t sue the Topeka Board of Education, and why Grutter and Gratz couldn’t sue the University of Michigan (my alma mater), and why the ACLU doesn’t actually exist.

Learn to read. Then use that ability to educate yourself to the point where you know what you’re talking about. Then we’ll talk.

Whatever the heck you claim to be, you’re significantly to the Left of anything recognizable as a Libertarian. Kinda like Bill Maher.

…how about you spend your clearly-precious time either addressing the subject matter or doing something else?

At least you’ve got the decency to admit that you didn’t actually read what I wrote. I guess that’s something.

so I should expect them to gang up on him beat him senseless.

Suspicion is a terrible thing. Looking at your record of commentary, I suspect that you sit substantially to my left politically – which is fine, it just doesn’t restore my faith in the right’s capacity for political discourse.

Still, what the hell – your points are sound and civil, and worth addressing. So, for starters: yes, I wholeheartedly reject government administration of our nation’s health care providers. And you raise a valid point which I also embrace: creating a government health insurance program would be fraught with difficulty and potential danger.

Moving on to a discussion of what that program would actually look like, I’d cheerfully invite suggestions – I’ve got no ideological stake in *how* it gets done, and I’d appreciate good ideas from any quarter. With that said, and acknowledging that I’m not married to these tenets, a few factors that seem unavoidable:

- Enrolling in the public program cannot be mandatory. There’s enough real-world evidence to demonstrate that there’s no danger of a public insurance program driving private companies from the market, so there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a competitive marketplace to help keep costs down and maintain such innovation as can be expected in the industry.

- Mandating the purchase of insurance? Everything about me hates that idea, but the issue is tricky because by its nature it’s a ‘nanny state for the irresponsible’. Do you force people to purchase insurance (nanny state), do you let irresponsible people bleed to death on the ER floor (eww), or do you just let the uninsured keep being a drain on the system? I know I’ll catch flak for not taking the ‘let ‘em bleed’ stance, but I feel like we can do better, and I certainly don’t care to be handing out licenses-to-sponge – incentives for bankruptcy seem like a bad idea. One suggestion might be some kind of auto-enroll system – if you don’t make other arrangements for your health insurance, your income tax gets bumped to pay for your automatic enrollment in a bare-bones emergency care plan. Seems like that could work – you pay for the police force even if you don’t get robbed, so I’m not dead-set against that kind of a solution.

With regard to your other points: I don’t know how to keep the courts from doing anything they please – if you figure it out, let me know. I just can’t countenance using potential wrongs as an excuse for avoiding necessary rights. Is it possible that a leftist political movement might successfully enact a national healthcare system? Yeah, it is – anything’s possible. But I will say that a robust public insurance program would go a long way towards relieving most of the political will behind health care reform – that, in and of itself, could rob the extreme left of the steam it would need to pass an actual government takeover.

nt