>With respect, your treatise is heavily skewed toward a familiar anti-government position.

I am not anti-government. I am anti-runaway, gigantic, finger in every pie, unlimited acronym creating never yielding ever growing taxpayer life sucking, cradle to grave nannying government.

In short, I am a Constitutionalist of the pre-FDR threatened Supreme Court mold.

>So why not examine the French and Swiss healthcare schemes and try to apply the same rhetoric? Even Swiss detractors of their own system are unlikely to agree that the system is bad because so many are at the government teat.

I was speaking of US medicare, not other systems.

>In addition, people might examine formal insurance schemes owned (but not run directly by) government: one accessible example would be the Accident Compensation scheme in NZ. Again not perfect, but it includes tort reform and now is required to cover all predictable future costs for current injuries out of current levies rather than being a "pay as you go" system like Medicare that always ends in huge Ponzi shortfalls. The scheme invests $ needed for future costs and can generate large surpluses when markets are good: rather than being sucked into private pockets, those surpluses can be used to increase services or decrease taxes. For example, bad times revealed shortfalls up to 2009 but this year the scheme generated a $2B surplus. On a population basis, a similar scheme in the US for accident alone would have generated a $250B surplus. Funding all healthcare on the same basis could have yielded a $2T surplus *AFTER* putting aside enough to cover predictable future needs. If you disagree, also look at the Australian compulsory national superannuation scheme: Aussies now have more invested per capita in managed funds than anybody else. This is a recipe for prosperity. Show me the victim, and remind me again why private schemes would have generated a better result for the nation rather than juicy dividends for a few?

We have a fundamentally different view on the issue. I am not interested in other countries' systems because they all (to my knowledge) involve the government in a transactional role. I want that eliminated and all health care transactions to take place in the private sector. The government's role should be limited to establishing and enforcing the basic rules. Further, the federal government should get out entirely as the issue is "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people", unless someone would care to suggest that health care did not exist and could not be foreseen in the 18th century. ;)

Health care is nothing more than goods & services. The private sector will always be more efficient than the public sector at providing goods & services owing simply to their nature, one produces, one consumes. Again, this is not rhetoric nor junk science, it is a simple economic fact.

In addition, I am pro-liberty and health care is the ultimate liberty restricting mechanism, which is why it is persued so vehemently by every behavior-controling anti-freedom, elite statist in power. A fundamental truth in life is that whomever writes our checks makes the rules for us. Be it our parents when we're young, our bosses or the government. When government controls the levers of health care spending, then they are unlimited in their ability to tell us how to live our lives, after all, whatever we put in or do with our bodies may cost them money. Therefore, the government can dictate every single aspect of our lives. For examples see the justification for all laws restricting sugar, fast food, salt, dairy, eggs, school lunches, tobacco, liquor, guns, helmets, seatbelts, advertising, SUVs etc, and now toys in happy meals. Every behavior controlist can justify their myopic belief because "we all pay for it", where 'it" is whatever annoys them and the payment is from government provided health care money.