This is a rather long (and probably convoluted) post, so I apologise in advance....

Although the original post was spot on (Mike's opinion), there is another fundamental flaw in the whole healthcare/health insurance discussion folks seem to be missing.

Health Care and it's child, Health Insurance are businesses. "Everyone has a right to healthcare" is a concept false to fact. The fact is, healthcare costs money. The fact is, health insurance costs money. The higher healthcare costs go, then the higher the base rate for health insurance will go. There is no such thing as free health care, except for those who pay no taxes...everyone else pays, some more than others.

If we as a society decide that everyone has a "right" to health care, then we need to understand who is going to pay for it, how much it will cost and what the expected quality will be. We also need to understand all the factors that impact cost:

1) Regulation adds to the cost of healthcare. Some regulation may be necessary, but it still adds a significant chunk to the cost.

2) Litigation adds cost to healthcare in two forms

a) More Regulation

b) Higher Insurance premiums for doctors

3) "Right" to treatment or "Right" to Health Insurance adds to cost. Somebody has to pay for folks that don't.

a) Analog to this "There are XX million people without health insurance in this country and that's a problem." Mike's position: Why is that a (big) problem? Because a group of politicians convinced folks that it is???

4) Limits on the number of doctors produced by our medical schools (in the right specialties) also adds to the cost (supply-demand).

Although Health Care in the US is far from perfect, it's NOT in crisis as some folks would have us believe (again Mike's opinion).

We need to attack the fundamental things that increase cost and recognize that it is a business...Very few people in this world would go thru the many years of education and training to become a doctor or anything else like that unless they were convinced that they would be well compensated in the end. Most folks won't work for free.

We need to get out of the "big brother" approach of limiting the number of Big Macs folks eat and concentrate on the real cost impacts. Health Care is not a right; it's a service for fee. Insurance is not a right, it's a wager between me and the insurance company...it's a contract that I'm free to enter into or not.

Regards,

Mike