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To: 2sigma who wrote (212318)	7/24/2009 4:26:39 PM
From: GST	Respond to of 306849

<Public subsidy and subsequent efficiency of services (i.e. police, fire, education and now healthcare) is the issue.> We don't subsidize the judicial system -- including police. We pay for it -- period. When you are in court you do not tip the judge if the verdict goes your way. Nor do you tip the police -- they are working in public service. Same for public education -- it is not subsidized, it is paid for. As you move into higher education students pay fees, and those are growing larger over time although they may be offset somewhat by financial aid. <Look at what public subsidy has done for education. This country has been moving towards functionally illiteracy for years relative to the rest of the first world.> The public school system in the US does have shortcomings -- those who work in public schools would say as much. Countries with high educational standards have fine public schools -- this is normal. Our schools are not failing due to public subsidies -- they are failing because of social and economic failure and our failure to ensure school funding and quality. As a result, some public schools are great and some are a disgrace. <Try Singapore. I hear there is lots of enforcement, but I wouldn't call their society any more free than here, it feels excessively constrained.> The police in Singapore can only do what their law allows -- and it matters not one bit what I feel about it. The issue is how do they feel about it. You assume they hate it -- but it is up to them to make the call, not you. Try living in a failed state where there is no law and order except the law of the gun. Then you will know what it is to lose your freedom. <Again freedom has nothing to do with the govt. providing healthcare. It's a luxury, based on available resources of a jurisdiction, not a right. It's not endowed to us by our creator. Where were you when the founding documents were taught in school, smokin' a crack pipe?> You see a man on the street, he is having a heart attack, and you say, "hey buddy, have you not heard, health care is a luxury." A child is in a car accident and is bleeding to death, but in the emergency room you say "hey kid, we don't provide the luxury of life saving services for just anybody. Ask your mom to sew you up with a dirty needle when you get home." You think I am abstract -- that is a laugh. Doctors exist to save lives -- going without health care means people die, not to mention bankrupting themselves and their families along the way. It does not seem like much of a luxury. It is only a luxury when you filter reality through big, thick ideological glasses that prevent you from looking into the eyes on the real faces of real people suffering from real life threatening crises and the bankruptcy that illness brings to Americans. As I said before, if bin Laden tried to slit the throat of an American soldier and if bin Laden was injured in his attack, we would give him medical care -- would you do less for a dying American child?