[godfry n. glad]

Damn...

The target ran before I could get back to the thread.

Xouper is as libertarian as I imagined.

He did make one nice point, though. There is no such thing as "free" healthcare. Every decision made has a cost and establishes a relative value. I make it point to discuss single-payer health insurance, largely because it has the same effect as a public benefit, albeit one that operates by income transfer (or wealth transfer) from those who have the means and a relatively small need, to those who have no or little means, in order to protect and maintain basic health of every individual as a public heath measure. We can argue over what qualifies as "basic health".

Current healthcare is NOT free market, by any stretch of the imagination. There is a very tight level of control in market entry of physicians, which acts to give that very actor within the market excessive economic power in the exchanges of goods and services. So much so that an increase in supply often leads to an increase in the cost per unit, counterintuitive and counter expectation.

Then, the market is also inhabited by players who have excessive political and economic power, thanks to their government granted powers: pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to patent laws and economic concentration, these corporations have the ability to effect legislation to their increasing benefit through lobbying and candidate funding. That this has increased the power of the consumer is doubtful.

So... Protecting the market as it is now is hardly libertarian. There is no free market in health care. I'm dubious about a healthcare industry that is unregulated for quality. Anybody want to have a splenectomy at Joe & Thelma's Corner Discount Surgery?

Thus, from my view, the best we can expect is for the government we elect to protect us to oversee the various actors in the provision of healthcare...it seems that pooling funds so that everybody gets basic health care is a compassionate and worthy thing to do. Not just to children, but to everybody. A single-payer system with rationing would be the most equitable.