I was writing a longish reply to a commentor so I've decided to shamelessly convert to a blog entry. He or she wrote:

"Health care industry is bad enough already. You want to give it to the government?

How good of a record do they have managing things?"

This is one of those arguments that dissolves the minute you think about it. The government runs many things quite competently. Would you like to be on the run from the FBI or the CIA? No, me either. If you were surrounded by hostile forces, who would you call before dialing up the Marines? Would you choose to be protected by any military on Earth before that of the United States? No, I didn't think so. Are you going to bet against the National Health Institute having financed the next Nobel Prize winning medical research? No, not that either.

So give it a break. It sounds good to smear "the government" or "worshington" with a snear, but it makes less than no sense at all.*

For me, the debate over national health care is like a bunch of neighbors getting together one weekend a month to clear the brush around the neighborhood to prevent fire breaking out. If you do it, nobody loses their house. Ever. Yeah, it's a hassle. Most guys would prefer to sleep late that Saturday (read: pay less taxes), but in the long run, everyone wins. The final cost is much less, cause fewer houses get torched (disease is caught much earlier). It's win-win. Any lazy asshole who refuses to participate doesn't deserve to be part of the neighborhood.

So who loses? The Fire Department (Insurance). They want more shiny new trucks, so they don't want people to organize into mutually-beneficial groups that threaten their status and income stream.

Still not convinced? Insurance lobbying groups are spending over A MILLION DOLLARS A DAY to kill this reform. Follow the money, people. If the present system weren't obscenely corrupt, why would anyone spend that kind of money to protect it?