See? Your first sentence blows up right off the bat. There is no "private health monopoly." There is no single Rockefeller-owned "insurance trust." It's the other side advocating a single monopoly solution. Or monopsony to be precise. Look around at industries where the government is the only paying customer. Are they shining lights of efficiency, incorruptibility, and low cost? I speak as someone who has an intimate knowledge of government space programs. Maybe someone else here has worked in the defense industry.

As for the rest, look around again. We're in the so-called "compromise." Nearly half of all our health care spending is from the government right now. In 2009 that number was 44 percent (Table 5). In 2003 (the furthest back on the table) it was 39 percent.

How's that working? Back when the government was spending much less of our bill, were health care costs higher or lower?

And do you really consider a free and competitive market, with many consumer choices, to be some kind of polar extreme on the opposite side of state control of an entire industry? I mean, really?

"What, you want to wear no chains at all? Where is your spirit of compromise?"