If you have long hair, then you must be dumb. Or if you believe in god you must be a fundamentalist or.... YaddahYaddh goes big Larry.

The Big Myth: Governmental controls on helath care NECESSARILY mean government monopoly and removal of market forces.

The less chicken-little truth:
Nationalising health-care does not mean you remove market forces, it means that you look at it as national infrastructure- like military or interstate highway maintenence/construction, or the criminal justice system. There are MANY MANY MANY ways to work healthcare on this level that won't be as NECESSARILY autocratic and failed as you make it out to be. This is a perfectly valid move economically, it does not contradict either nacent or even most classical economic perspectives(that I am aware of). It is a degree of nationalisation, however, that I don't agree with.

The Big Myth:
All things valued to humans necessarily have a measurement in economic terms

the less simple-minded truth:
Justice, for example, is subject to economic considerations, but is largely apart from it. When the jury assigns 'justice', it rarely and certainly not by the essence of its action, considers economic considerations. Where economic awards come in into the justice system, it is secondary and is a small part of punishment.

This is why a 'life' never has an economic value that economists refer to. I assure you that there is no economic constant or calculation that produces the value of a human life.

Tort damages, the notion of civil liability is a different bird from criminal justice.

'Freedom' is another non-economic social facet of our reality. Again, there is an entanglement with economic notions, but it can NOT BE DEFINED in terms of economic value.

Should we decide that there is a binding non-economic right to health care, then thats perfectly reasonable. We can do that.

An old adage in Economics is that Economics is *the* human behavior. I don't buy this. I am not a true scholar in economics, and perhaps this is why I don't buy this adage (I say this to suggest that i am not steeped in the field like a fly in amber). The fact is trivially obvious, though, that not all human behaviors and concepts can be analyzed solely as economic activities. Helathcare is one of these. It would be a radical change but not necessarily economic bullshit as you so ardently claim.

Now, how it cashes out and who cashes in on the system are good questions. We can talk about these rationally if you pry your head out and stop mumbling that any socialization/nationalisation is not reasonable.

Davin L.