Sir, I absolutely agree with you about 'free' public education being a success.
Re health-care: free at point of delivery? higher taxes to fill the black-hole?? Is health-care ever free? Is the onus never on the patient?? I reiterate: it's complicated. That's no argument for no change...but I won't throw the book at Obama alone (think Congress and Hillary C health reform).
I misspoke. I implied public education is free. It isn't "free", it costs and is paid for by taxation. It has been a worthy (almost obviously so) endeavor to pursue.
I'm going to deviate a little off point for a minute. The society or otherwise other entity or individual which is subject to the least amount of government control will always be the society, entity or individual who's most responsible. Correspondingly so, the society (or any other entity or individual) which behaves least responsibly is the one which gets more governmental or authoritarian intervention in their affairs.
For example, I wear seat belts, think it's the responsible thing to do and favor their use. However, I am opposed to the government looking in your car and then fining you for not wearing one.
If though, people were more responsible in wearing them there likely wouldn't be the sentiment to create a law. This is not the best example as there's more to seat belt laws than meets they eye but the point is, if there is no "there"..there's no reason for statutory intervention.
Where am I going with this? State's right's aside...this is the United States of America. What is the point of having some federation of states under one Constitution if the application of it's protections and ideals are scoffed off by the states under it? Had the states (general terms) did the right things when the ball was in their court with respect to education...the fed would have had no cause to intervene.
It is veritably no different with respect to health care insurance and it's costs in practical terms. To operate insurance companies obviously require bonding, licensing, etc. Once certain obligations are met the government allows them to legally operate as for basic consumer protection it doesn't allow companies to operate absent having met some standard for fiduciary responsibility.
Private insurance companies understandably being for profit enterprises can't and or won't cover everyone. Where they don't in most cases some government picks up the tab for those left out. After all, it isn't in a nation's best interests to have untreated disease and illness moving through it's population. Or it's people dropping dead and lying there in the streets until their corpse is reduced to bone like carcasses in the wild.
Since the concept of public health was never fully embraced as there are invariably those who are consumed with the concept of their own, personal taxation and those who exploit the sentiment...we were not only saddled with an imperfect system but one doomed to failure. Never mind the fact they miss is the current system when it breaks will cost everyone more.
The private sector insurance, pharmaceutical companies and consumer have so mismanaged their affairs that they've created a circular firing squad cyclically bankrupting each other. (Patients who can't pay medical expenses, hurt the service provider, service providers who then cease to provide service, cause sicker patients, sicker patients cost their insurance carriers more in the long run...so they cease to provide coverage in some cases, fewer people covered means less business for ol' Doc, etc., etc., etc.)
The two systems together represent a 1-2 punch bankrupting the nation's prosperity.
Since the likelihood is these systems which interdependent on one another shows no signs of self rectifying...the government is intervening for it's own sake.
Health care like public education, is something the government believes is not only a worthy endeavor but also that it's nation generates enough capital to provide it at a basic level to it's population.:2 cents:
