The U.S. Senate Health Control Plan...I mean Health "Care" Plan.

The only "entitlement" is life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and equal treatment under the law. We PAY for everything else: police to protect us, highways to drive on, the FAA to monitor air safety, the schools that educate us, we that pay taxes pay for it all. The representatives who pass our laws? They are our employees, not vice-versa, we pay their salaries and expenses. When I show up sick at the ER and cannot pay, the rest of you will pay through taxes or higher insurance. There is no free lunch. I think health care is something that we, as a society, should choose to pay for. An online acquaintance put it to me this way through a quote from a renowned American Jurist: "I like paying taxes; with them, I buy civilization." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Seems my opinions are considered strange by both extremes: I'd like to see a national single-payer system available for all (and I do mean all) which would include good health maintenance (including encouraging people to take appropriate responsibility for their own health -- liberal social engineering at its finest that this near-libertarian loves) as well as routine, emergency, and catastrophic care. This should be paid for through taxes, and it should be administered by a not-for-profit agency accountable to congress. All this, while at the same time allowing people who can and choose to do so to pay for care above and beyond -- like for purely cosmetic, experimental, or luxury-spa-type clinics and hospitals which are allowed to operate on a for-profit basis--call it a hybrid between public and privately funded systems. Our streets and highways are an analogy: The government (local, state, national) builds and maintains the roads with our tax money where we as individuals could not do so. Each person then can buy the compatible transportation module of his/her choice and means from many for-profit sources. I can drive my eco-friendly ultra-low-emissions econobox or a scooter while a person who can and wishes to pay more for the vehicle itself (and more in highway costs through sales taxes and fuel taxes) can drive the luxury boat of their choice. States run their own highway programs, meeting Federal standards. One difference from highway funds -- I'd like to see the states collect ALL the tax money for health care and manage the single-payer health care within their states -- meeting, of course, Federal standards. On the plus side, this builds incentive (and competition) for efficient management. On the minus side, it opens up more opportunities for fraud and would have to be closely monitored as we do now with the collection and management of employment taxes and sales taxes.

How about the Constitutional issues of requiring everyone to have coverage and the issues of how to fairly collect the taxes that would pay for universal health care? These are two topics worthy and needful of discussion on their own merit but are much too involved to touch here.