Paying for a huge government bureaucracy and giving handouts to deadbeats hardly equates to "paying for the best".

Paying for the best refers to paying for "the best country in the world to live" in if people believe that is what they have. Why pick out one small nit? Either people do or don't believe their country is something special. If they do believe it si something special, they should expect to pay more than everybody else, especially if they espouse user-pays Capitalism. Otherwise they're Randian spongers expecting special outcomes in exchange for nothing.

US taxes are way too high - this last weekend I heard on the news that if Obama's health care reform gets through, the average American will be paying 52% of his income in taxes. Any system that takes more than half of what a person earns is taking too much.

See above.

Here's a scenario for you: say Obama raises your and Andy's tax by $6000 to pay for healthcare. OK, you pay $6000 more tax but you no longer pay the $7600 insurance you've had to pay until now. Why are you worse off? This is why focusing exclusively on tax isn't valid. Healthcare is still paid but the name on the check is different and the amount in the end is less. Where is the victim? This doesn't even include the Meeicaid savings from problems dealt with before it becomes a crisis.

FWIW, experts now say that if the Canadian syster were transposed to the US it would cost $1TRILLION less even after providing care for the 45M Americans who don't have care now. You've said elsewhere that the 1T deficit is a burden for future generations: well, right there is a mechanism to resolve it.

And who is going to be the judge of who deserves the $? You?

All I'm doing is querying the speeches made by others. I do have opinions about viable destinations for $ - e.g. science rather than marketing, $200B to return to the moon rather than $800B to bail-out stupid greedy bankers- but I'm not making speeches or trying to jam it down others' throats.