It is not my responsibility to pay for your health, and it is not society’s responsibility to pay for your good health. If you want to be healthy take care of yourself. If you can’t afford to pay for some terrible thing that happens to you, turn to your family and friends, if they can’t help turn to the neighbors in your community to help. The key is choice.

In a government run health care solution, I have no choice. I have to help you, or the IRS comes after me. Personally, I will refuse to work and have my income garnished to support you. I may have wanted to help you out, but the second you forced it upon me you lost me. I rather sit on a park bench and do nothing all day.

As for whether the top #5 Health care lies are fact or opinions. I guess time will tell. Some people have a better sense of actions and their consequences. Take away a Doctor’s incentive to practice medicine, he won’t want to practice medicine. Helping people isn’t ones sole motivation to become a doctor. Force him into a situation where he has no option but to help, and watch the quality go down, and less Doctors enter the field. Why would anyone want to contribute when others can get things for free? It doesn’t make much sense. Here, let me go to work, so you can sit on your butt all day. Not going to happen. Or do you propose that the government forces us all to work, so we can pay taxes to fund your health care?

Offer a health care option at a cheaper price and people will come in droves. Forget to run it like a business, which big government seems to do quite often and you end up having to raise everyone’s taxes.

The changes won’t affect the rich, they’ll always have the money they need to pay for good quality health care. Forget about the poor, they already have great health care. The only people that truly are affected are the middle class, and what they’ll get is long lines and pitiful service. Instead of Canadians coming down to the U.S., we’ll all be singing Viva La Mexico. I hear they’ve got great health care, don’t they?

Other topic: If you get hit by a bus (and not die), you will be quite damaged. You may not be coherent. Are you willing to carry a card that says “uninsured … if it costs more than $xxxK to fix me, please do not take me to a medical facility”? (of course, this $ amount would have to be based on your net worth and credit rating) … if so, good for you, but I suspect the vast majority of folks would not sign up for that feature as part of reform. When I was 12, one of my best friends fell out of a tree and became a quadraplegic. He was in the hospital for 2 years. I don’t know how that was paid, but I know the family could never have paid on their own. Are children supposed to be subject to their parents’ decisions not to be insured (and carry the ‘uninsured advisory card’)? I suppose this could be fine with your philosophy/opinion, but it is not mine.

I would suggest that because as a society, we collectively have inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (don’t think I need to bother with the footnote) — I believe it goes without saying that you cannot do that without a foundation of good health. Now that ‘good health’ has gone beyond the days when it was everything the village Doc can fit in a black bag, the portion of our inalienable rights that is our collective health cannot be left solely in the hands of profit motivated organizations.