Healthcare costs in America are high, and it's interesting that they're higher per capita than in countries with national health care systems (I don't have the link handy, but it's right there in the UN Human Development Programme yearly statistics).

Thinking about that makes me wonder when we Americans started taking for granted that it's up to business to provide health care. We talk like it's a law of nature that it should be that way, but I'm hard-pressed to find a rational reason why inconsistent and generally substandard healthcare delivered by capricious business pursuing its own narrow interests is superior to universal health care provided by a democratic government.

I think the phenomenon began shortly after WWII, when business started offering health insurance as a benefit to attract workers in a tight labor market. In times of high employment business-sponsored health insurance delivers health care to a large percentage of Americans, but in hard times, and especially under conditions of pernicious long-term structural unemployment and underemployment like we've seen the last few years, the system fails us badly. The system we have isn't the result of rational consideration, it just happened due to the economic circumstances existing after the war.

Aside from the fact that this arrangement just isn't working, it bothers me on principle. On general principles I'm uneasy being dependent on somebody else for life itself, and to me the lesser evil is to be dependent on government rather than private business, simply because--in theory--the government answers to me and private business most definitely does not.

Look at it this way: If we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, wouldn't you rather have your testicles clamped in a vise controlled by what amounts to your own hand rather than somebody else's hand? Me too!