I like to think you learned something, too. You don't think this issue has ever come up when free market people discuss this?

It isn't a "case for privatization" as much as it was a history showing how private alternatives worked in many cases, but were not perfect by any means, and were not able to compete under the circumstances described. It also pointed out that it was in the interest of the private

I was just showning how Buck's link reflected a very simpleminded - to be as generous as possible - viewpoint on the part of the link's authors.

The idea of health care as some sort of "commons" folds up almost immediately, unless maybe we're talking large-scale communicable diseases. Keep in mind that for many, many years the private health care system and insurance industry did pretty well taking care of Americans. Into my own lifetime, come to that.

There is a meme that somehow the planet would implode into a singularity if we modified ever-growing government spending and wealth redistribution. One has to keep in mind that until the 1960s, almost none of these things existed on this scale, and somehow we were prosperous, healthy, and singularity-free.

Putting 300 million people on government health care dole will destroy the health care system. The numbers don't work, the market forces fight it at every point, and the mechanisms that are creating the technologies and advancements would be caved in. We would end up with far worse care than any of the systems in other countries that typically deal with a fraction of that population level.

This issue has never been about delivering health care. It's about power and loot, which is pretty much what every government control issue ends up being about.

A healthy system is one that is truly competitive, and has many providers to choose from, none of which should be phony "competitors" artificially supported by taxpayer money. This applies to a lot of economic areas besides health care.