Resolved; I don't want to pay for your health care.

When you are able to put together a cogent and logical argument by which you can persuade me to pay for your health care (or anything else of yours for that matter), then I will cede my position.

Unfortunately this is an unfair proposition, it is like asking a rooster to lay an egg, you cannot come up with a reason beyond selfishness, laziness, and advocacy for centralized government control by which to argue for the type of government-funded health care the American Democrat party and many left-leaning interest groups intend to foist upon the American people.

HMO's and other "Insurance" providers are where reform, if any should be aimed at. Private health insurance providers discourage price competition by artificially raising prices. Since health care providers are billing a company with a large pool of money rather than individuals with realistic budgets, costs are high simply because there are large pools of money in the insurance providers to pay higher costs. Health care providers may be able to logically justify the reasons for their costs, but the over inflation has had a trickle down effect in the costs that manufacturers and suppliers can charge for health care goods and services from cotton swabs to MRI scanners, and the type of salaries that doctors and health care professionals demand and expect. Simple supply and demand forces at work.

If insurance simply did not exist and all consumers were required to pay their health care bills out of pocket — at current costs — then supply would likely exceed demand. That is there would likely be plenty of health care to provide but no one able to purchase it. That is if I sell apples at $100/lb I will go out of business since I cannot sell apples, thus I need to lower the cost of my apples. Thus the costs would naturally adjust to what would be payable by the customer. Therefore by buying into the idea of insurance we at once are able to protect ourselves from unexpected and catastrophic medical bills at the expense of higher costs all around due to many things. Overinflated costs of care by providers, the overhead of bureaucracy both by health care providers and the insurance company to manage the system (staff salaries are included in medical bills and your health insurance premium of course) and base profit; the hospital makes a profit and the insurance company makes a profit. Now this is not essentially an argument against health care insurance in totality, but by the mass buy in of the premise to allow someone else to manage the responsibility of our health care, purchasing the insurance product, we have already given up our right to having naturally affordable health care. Giving up essential liberty for safety; giving up responsibility and budget minding for ignorance. We've decided to put up with health care costing a lot of money by being scared into believing it must be expensive...by the "greed" of the insurance company, the health care provider, and the paid for politician by one or both interests. But that is capitalism and if you can make a product and people are willing to buy it then that is how it is.

We all buy into it, I buy into it. My employer provides a health insurance program. While some companies don't charge premiums for their policy some do, mine does. The suggestion that employer-provided health care is somehow "free" or cheap is simply ignorance. Yes to me, the employee, paying $50 per paycheck into the company plan to carry that policy is cheaper than getting my own private plan but overall the company policy is neither cheaper or "free" at all. The company pays into the plan itself. Where do companies get money for this? Why from product and service sales of course! It means that it is built in overhead, the costs trickle down to the consumer of whatever it is the company is selling. Which means if you walk into a supermarket that provides a health insurance plan for its employees, the consumer pays a percentage of it in the profit that the supermarket builds into the price of goods beyond the "wholesale cost" of the goods on its shelves. Et cetera, ad nauseum to all other businesses. That is much of the cost of health care is irrevocably linked into the costs of doing business, which are all in the end passed on to us.

What other negative effects are there of the health insurance industry? Rationed care is one of them. The insurance company is able to dictate what for and how much they will pay for care items. Some things are not covered. Some limit you to lists of providers from which you must chose for you to be reimbursed costs. While this means that many insurance carriers shun the "bad" providers which helps weed out the poor performers and promotes better levels of care, it also takes away your right to use a provider you prefer if they aren't in your policy. Some people live with this and others change carriers to get the coverage they prefer. As a customer those choices are still available. However the bureaucracy involved in dealing with the carrier is often times a decidedly strenuous activity. At least the health insurance provider wants to keep you as a customer so they're likely going to attempt to treat you like some kind of human being. Thus you can imagine working with a government bureaucracy such as the likes of the IRS to pay for your health care, and unlike a private company they don't have to care about you as a customer because you are impelled by law to pay for your insurance through taxes levied on all of us. Is it not yet very clear a government "plan" could and would be less than ideal?

Still not convinced, well lets look at where government health care has been implemented, in places like Canada and the United Kingdom. It won't take much of a Google search to find unbiased reports on the faults of these systems. Severe rationing of care. Horrible waiting periods to receive care. Substandard care due to lack of competition. Two simple stories, which are not anecdotal, can curl your hair. Tony Blair, just shortly before the end of his term as Prime Minister, advocated for a "reform" whereby "all appointments for health care must be addressed within 48 hours of the appointment being made". This to address the woefully long wait times to see a provider. The response of the health care industry once this was mandated? They stopped taking appointments once they'd booked enough appointments to meet the 48 hour quota, telling patients to "call back" later as their appointment could not be booked and served in 48 hours. Another example is the cost quota. Dentists in Great Britain are paid by the government a rate which is equivalent to a certain quota of patients. They get paid the full amount only if they see the quota of patients, but if they exceed the quota they are not paid commensurate with the figure, that is if they are supposed to see 50 patients in a month to get paid the full "salary" there is no reason for them to see 51 or 100, because every one over the 50 is essentially "free" (well it lowers the average hourly rate of the provider). Thus many chose to close up shop and refuse patients after the quota has been met. And who can blame them?

But this is hate mongering, pandering to the fears of people to turn them against necessary health care reform. This is what the left leaning argument has been over making such comparisons. President Obama and many of the supporters of furthering this type of legislation claim that it is not a "socialized" solution as is a very apt definition of what is present in Great Britain and Canada. Their counter is that we may keep our insurance plans as they are if we have them or use the government system, but we must have something for everyone. Indeed the way the current legislation is designed, if a company does not provide a health care plan then they must provide the government option or pay an exorbitant fine. Why would a company choose to pay for and pass premiums on to its employees (incurring an overhead cost in profits, especially in competitive production sectors) when it can simply offer the government option? It's a good question because many may choose not to. When we are offered the ability to sign up on the government doles of health care for nothing other than a raise in taxes, on only the wealthy of course, then why would we buy our own health care or buy into a private carrier policy offered at work. This will destroy the private health insurance providers. So everyone will end up, over time, on the government plan. This IS a centralization of power, and that IS socialist. It is a turn down a road packaged in pretty wrapping of eloquent words and a parade of "victims" of catastrophic health issues without insurance or with insurance that refuses to pay for the problem, and furthermore inflation of numbers of uninsured to incite the impression of a "crisis". The high estimates often include illegal immigrants, transient employed persons who recently changed jobs and are between coverage cycles by their employer's plans (especially in the current economy), and persons who for whatever reason can afford a private plan and choose not to buy one. Some unscrupulous numbers include those who are not individually insured but are covered under a spouse who carries a plan (employees who opt out of their own plans), or those who are impossible to get coverage such as children with terminal cancer (who often recieve "gratis" or reduced cost treatment from charity organizations and even drug companies). Furthermore the suggestion that the poor and elderly are not covered is a farce. Remember the elderly and poor are already covered by Medicare and Medicaid thanks to LBJ's "Great Society". When you deconstruct the numbers really a small minority (around than 3-4% by some estimates) of Americans (there are roughly 300 million of us so about 10-12 million) are chronically uninsured for whatever reason.

Therefore I contest that the advocacy for a government-funded and operated health care plan is nothing less than a power grab by politicians interested in such schemes. 

Health Care is NOT a right. Once we define and sell Health Care as a right then we must define all necessities of life as a "right". Should not everyone have a right to eat? Should not everyone have a right to a home? Should not everyone have a right to running water? Should not everyone have a right to... Yes this is a slippery slope argument, but almost always once greased by "free" taxpayer money, slopes such as this can never again be ascended.

Health Care for YOU is not MY responsibility. Government entitlement spending is tantamount to walking up to someone's front door and handing them the bill for something you've expended. I already pay for the elderly, the poor, and the illegal immigrant to have health care under Medicare and Medicaid. Now I should have to pay for everyone?

So I am full of opposition and no answers right? Just a misanthropic tight-arsed backward conservative right-wing loon? Not really, consider the alternative below.

Part of a sustainable free-market answer might be to persuade a majority of individuals to create specific individual (or family) medical savings accounts, perhaps even as an opt-in government sponsored high-yield savings account, similar in concept to the 401k, where you use it for the intended purpose but using it otherwise would come with a penalty (if you choose to use the government system). This Private Savings Account would be drawn upon for health care expenses only. I would envision simply requiring billing from a health care provider to be justified use.  The government would not tell you how you can spend this money only that it must exclusively be used for health care expenses, however it would behoove you to withhold the monies for truly disastrous cases such as surgery or an unexpected injury or illness rather than for routine doctor visits. Certainly some people would have more expenses than others and won't make as much as others. The couple with a family of four making $80,000/yr combined is likely not going to be able to save up as much as the single person making $60k or the couple making $200k, and perhaps there is a good solution to that as well out there, which embraces the free market ideas and focuses on the cost benefit to the consumer.

Health Care cannot be a centralized system funded by taxpayers, wrought with bureaucratic regulation, and hampered by turning the customer into a social security number that pays taxes rather than a customer paying for a service. Otherwise the standards we have come to expect and enjoy will wither and die just as we will under such a heavy hand of the nanny state.