Darren New wrote:
Anyone who's followed this thread should know how I would answer these 
questions. But, "what the Hell?".

> 
> What if the slaves are in the majority?

A voting majority? History leads me to believe that a voting majority of 
slaves would likely just foolishly try to vote the non-slaves into 
deeper slavery than their own rather than free themselves, but they 
would at least have the means to free themselves. That's all we should 
offer them.

> So, doctors and insurance companies are powerless, and the little old 
> lady with cancer is powerful?

Yes, a little old lady with a terminal and expensive condition is very 
powerless. Nevertheless, she does have the means to purchase what health 
care she can afford, and we should aggressively fight against any 
corruption which raises her costs.

Might sound cruel, but we've got to accept that there is only so much 
money to go around for treatment just like there are only so many 
livers. Doesn't matter how you mix it, organize it, whatever.

There are things that could be done on the preventative side. We could 
discuss whether a State would benefit by providing publicly funded, 
preventative *only*, communicative disease *only* care; whether AIDS 
testing is a violation of privacy; and whether we should go even further 
and offer publicly funded screenings. But not today, please!

> 
> No amount of rules will make the enforcers of those rules obey 
> the rules.

True, but they do still require the complicity of the voters. The less 
money and power to be handed-out, the less complicit the voters are 
likely to be.

> 
> In any case, you seem to be alternating between "don't take my money to 
> fund this" and "it'll hurt people because it's uncompetitive", unless 
> I'm misremembering. I've been trying to get your take on a "public 
> option" that's neither required nor funded by those not taking advantage 
> of it, but I didn't actually get an answer.

A bad idea for the reason mentioned above. There would be nothing to 
stop the government (Remember that the stated goal of our President is 
single-payer) from engaging in illegal business practices to destroy the 
competition. The government might, for instance, operate at a loss until 
the free market alternatives were destroyed. This is illegal for a 
reason. The voters *could* stop it in the same way consumers *could* 
stop a private entity from using similar means to destroy the market, 
but they wouldn't. The voters would only see *temporarily* lower prices.

Going from a private to public system only changes the people at the 
top. Executives would be replaced by equally fallible and much more 
powerful people.

  -Shay

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