Well, this turned out exactly like I thought it would. Once words like "sheeple" and "liberal bias" and "death education" start getting thrown around the party's over anyway. And of course, Blacken's more concerned with causing a scene and Architect doesn't know who he's responding to from one post to the next. But maybe I can do some good here - allow me to refer to some factual evidence (remember that stuff?) for the sake of a coherent argument.
A little while ago, that renown arch-liberal Keith Olbermann (please don't spit on your monitor until I'm done) started advocating for the National Association of Free Clinics, an organization that gets doctors to populations where people need health care but can afford it or find it locally. They used to go to the third world, now they go to American suburbs. They haven't hosted a venue yet that wasn't packed, mostly by working people, often with nominal health insurance.
They needed the free help anyway because they either couldn't afford even the co-payments on their insurance, because their employer won't let them enough hours to qualify for full coverage, or any one of a thousand lawyering tricks to deny them coverage they thought they had. So the idea that the only people who want free health-care (which apparently is also a plot to kill people or something?) are lazy people who want everything handed to them is, of course, bullcrap.
Speaking of charity as whole, here's a math problem. Consider an ordinary American family, two adults and 2.3 children. Further consider that they make a combined income of $125000 a year. How good of health care do you suppose they can afford out of pocket? How much would they have left over afterward to kindly give to the less fortunate, supposing they were even willing to?
If your combined household income is $125000 a year, you're in the top 10% of American income earners. That seemingly innocuous (to some people) budget is technically rich. The wealthiest 3% of American taxpayers make (or at least report) about as much income as the entire 97% below them. This is why the wistful insistence that charity should be enough is also bullcrap. Only a tiny fraction of people in America can even afford to be charitable on a effective scale, and the very fact that we're arguing about healthcare proves they are not willing to.
So what's the answer then? I'm not arguing for government mandate charity or something (although you'll certainly insist I am, to America's swift self-immolation or whatever). There's plenty of different, rational, approaches to healthcare legislation that won't make the sky fall or make a life without imminent fear of illness a privilege of the rich. For instance, Switzerland and the Netherlands use fairly similar systems, whereby the entire population has full access to affordable healthcare with better statistical outcomes than America and without a dime of public money. How? Health insurance is treated as a heavily regulated utility, like electric companies, with mandates on access and price controls. In other words, taking the profit out of other people's sickness, like America should have done 70 years ago.
In summation, universal healthcare is entirely possible, the people advocating it are neither retarded puppets of the evil state nor self-indulgent whiners, soooOOOooocialism is a not a pact with the Devil even where it's the appropriate term, and voluntary goodwill is not a policy solution. But hey, it's the holidays, so let's try that anyway. If you're not afraid of your hands burning from touching something Keith Olbermann did,
why not donate some money for people who can't afford to pay for continued living themselves? I just sent $50. Will you send a few bucks? Because if your answer is anything but "yes, immediately", then that's pretty much quad erat demonstrandum on why your entire philosophy is total bullcrap.
Put simply: there's no appreciable benefit to UHC in the long run, even if applying capitalistic inducements to innovation to the medical field. Because, quite frankly, not every life is worth saving. We've determined, over a very long period of time, that the people who are most valuable to society--the most skilled and least replaceable--will be compensated with money. The people who can pay, will pay. The people who can't--well, as uncomfortable as it may be to consider, they're generally replaceable.
If you don't want to be in the latter category, make yourself irreplaceable. Nothing's stopping you except yourself.
You are a heartless monster, and more to the point, exactly one of those "replaceable" useless people.