Care to give more precise details on what you would find less scary than that (i.e. what specific method of evaluating you're talking about)? The impression I'm getting from what you've posted is that you'd support a system where care+provision of services+valuation of life was done solely on how much money a person is expected to earn in the rest of their lifetime (hence why I've asked for clarification in case this isn't what you're supporting). If it is though, it'd mean someone who has worked all their life paying taxes (but now doesn't earn much) doesn't get entitled to receive decent care (and it's not like you've got police insurance, or [insert various other publicly provided service not health related here] insurance. Similarly, a mother who raises 4 children and is only able to work part time is deemed near-worthless by such a system, since they're not directly earning money, even though they're benefitting society by raising those children who would then grow up to pay taxes. Then you have the worker who earns enough to survive, and who spends the vast majority of their time volunteering to help charitable causes. They benefit society by helping the most vulnerable, but they're not actually earning much if anything.

Meanwhile if you hear of people dying, which would be worse, '100 women and children slaughtered', or 'CEO killed'. I mean it could be those 100 women and children combined would never hope to earn as much as that CEO, but does that make them less valuable to society than the CEO? Is the value of someone simply about their earning potential and nothing else? In fact is money the sole thing of importance in life+society? Happiness afterall has been shown to bear more in common with relative incomes than absolute income (once you're above a basic level of income needed to survive) - society is happier with things being more equal (all else equal) - should that get ignored completely?

My liberal dad: If mccain just gives people a cash credit towards healthcare (instead of free healthcare like obama) most would spend it on a new car isntead.

Me: And those people are stupid enough to deserve to die from their choices. (and they wouldn't, because the hospital will still treat them, they will just have to declare bankrupcy... and wait longer, and get lesser treatment, but they will still be treated, which is completely wrong!).

what is worse is when the ceo is killed by the government so they can take HIS money and use it to save the lives of women and children whom they deem more important. And that is what we are discussing, we are not discussing killing 100 women or a ceo. We are discussing chosing to save one CEO or one housewife with the CEOs money.

Actually to be more accurate it is one ceo dies from being denied treatment to save one woman now, 10 woman die due to lack of treatment because said CEO is no longer paying taxes and funding more healthcare. (vs... one woman dies because she can not AFFORD treatment and chose to buy a second car instead of health insurence, and 10 women are saved over the next 10 years from the taxes the CEO pays, after he was ALLOWED to SAVE HIMSELF by hiring doctors with HIS OWN MONEY).

You are comparing apples and oranges.  We are not denying anyone the basic necessities of life, nor have we.  And 30 years?  Yea, about 100k years ago.  But life expectancy was growing even before anyone had mandatory health care.  And they will continue to grow. And death?  It comes to us all eventually.  We have not erradicated it.  We WANT to live longer.  we are not guaranteed it.  We may WANT health care, but while some need it to live, not all do.  That is the point.

Most people under 30 do not NEED any health care. (note not all, most).  When you state something is a NEED - you have to show a direct causality between it and rights.  And with health care that just does not exist.

The man who WANTS a color TV does not NEED a color TV.

No. He's not.  Good grief if some of you guys could just free your minds for half a second of your rooted ideology.

What he is saying is that the people -- individuals -- should be given as much control of their destiny as possible. If someone chooses not to get health insurance, then that is their choice and there are consequences that go with it.

Because healthcare is a finite resource, we already have people (doctors, insurance providers, etc.) making judgments as to who gets what. But least presently, the people in competition for those resources made the decision and put their own resources on the table to be in that competition.

But what universal healthcare does is bring everyone to the table where the new arrivals who are competing for this finite resource not only are freed from their own bad decisions but are paid for by the people they are competing with for those finite resources.

If healthcare was an infinite resource, this wouldn't be such an issue. But it's not.  And all the warm fuzzy love talk never changes that chilling underlying fact of life.

You know, I am often toying with the idea of moving to the states. (Of course, as a working non-Mexican English-speaker my chances of being seen as a compatible immigrant are slim.)

I like to do comparison calculations. I look up a city, check the rents, see what the job market has to offer, and try to figure out how much money I would make, how much rent I would pay, how much life would cost etc..

I _always_ include health insurance in the calculation. It wouldn't occur to me to live without just to save that money.

I am currently not employed (I work as a contractor; apparently I am some kind of Web server and database expert), but I do have health insurance. It came with my last job. But I kept it and kept paying for it when I quit, although I am no longer in the company plan.

But he also says there is no consequence, because if you don't have health insurance you just go to the hospital and get the treatment immediately anyway, declare bankruptcy and keep living your life as before.

Companies don't have the easy access to cash that governments do; I don't think it's fair to make private hospitals carry the poor without any recompense (they're unlikely to be high enough on the creditor list to get much of what they're owed back).

If you need non-essential health services, I think it's better you wait at home before going to a public hospital than clogging up a private hospital emergency room and then skipping on the bill and raising costs for everyone.

correct, also... skipping on the bill does have consequences... your credit is decimated for the next 7 years. Besides, I didn't say that it is GOOD that people can do all those things, I just said current laws already allows for this much leeway.

That's the very reason many young people take the risk of going without health insurance - the odds are with them as few people are 'shot'.  They would be smart to have insurance, but the younger you are the higher the cost/risk ratio & the less 'necessary' it seems.  They're not risking going without treatment, because they will be treated - what they are risking is all the stuff they bought instead of insurance.  Life cannot be insulated from choices, good & bad.  Universal or nationalized healthcare won't mean that all of a sudden everyone gets to go to the Mayo Clinic.  It will mean that a massive, faceless bureaucracy will have to be petitioned for anything 'expensive', the definition of which is subject to change, and there will be long waits for services in short supply.

The whole POINT of nationalized healthcare is to NOT scale it, to give "equally" to everyone.

Wait a minute. You never had a life-endangering condition? (you are old older than me, if I remember?)

Never had cancer? Aneurysm? An accident? An infection? Any disease that would be cure by modern medecine, but you have been near-certain death earlier?

If you want, I can make you meet peoples for who it had happened. And their family. You will argue to THEM that health care is not a necessity to living.

So presumably clothing isn't a need, since you can often survive without it? Similarly shelter isn't a need because you can live on the streets? For economic purposes, needs are generally seen as: Food, Water, Shelter, Clothing, Healthcare/Medicine (not to say everything in those catagories is a need of course; caviar, distilled water, a mansion house, leather jackets and cough sweets would all be wants not needs, despite fitting in each catagory respectively). That you would be attempting to compare healthcare to things such as a car, a phone, or other luxuries demonstrates just what sort of a gulf there is between the two. I can live without a phone, I can (and do) live without a car. I can live without fine foods, or designer clothing. I can live without a fancy house, holidays abroad, wine, cigarettes, etc. etc., but not healthcare. If I get a disease, or a severe injury, or [insert any other life endangering health related problem], I need healthcare.

Then you start talking of rights - that's totally separate to a need or a want. A right is something that society has deemed you are entitled to (and is typically enshrined within the laws of that country). I have a right to freedom of speech (subject to various restrictions) in my country, for example. It doesn't mean I need it. Meanwhile I don't have a specific right to a home, or a right to food, even though they are needs (although in reality I'd receive sufficient funding to be able to obtain these assuming I wasn't throwing my money away in other areas).

I disagree - there's a strong case that you would be smart to not have insurance! It depends on your risk aversion really, but if you're risk neutral then you should never have any kind of insurance unless you don't have to pay for it all. If you then factor in bankruptcy declerations and (in the case of health insurance) provision of essential healthcare you have an even stronger case for not getting insurance. That's being a bit picky on my part though .

Brad appeared to be suggesting public services should be scaled though, that is that if you're paying for these services for both yourself and someone else, if you both then need the service you should get priority because you've paid for it. Hence why I then spent more time going over the issue of valuing a life, and the scaling of public services etc. - I'm not trying to say that in reality public services would be scaled in such a way, it was more a hypothetical 'if they were' in part or fully.