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To: John Metcalf who wrote (100360)	8/4/2009 8:28:54 PM
From: Sea Otter	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Interesting. You know, I'm learning that the debate over health care really isn't about health-care per se, but what kind of society people want. At it's core it's really a debate about moral and social values. To massively generalize, my experience is that overseas most people think the "moral" approach is to have socialized or quasi-socialized health-care. They believe that's the "right" (if they're secular) or "Christian" (if they're religious) thing to do. They believe it's immoral that some members of the society aren't covered. In the US it's often the opposite. Many argue that universal health care is - in fact - immoral, inasmuch as the state itself is considered a tainted instrument. This attitude is widely held but particularly prevalent among conservative Christians. Wrt social values, it's really about how big the public sphere should be in life. The US, with its frontier history, has usually wanted a much larger private sphere than you see almost anywhere else. An expansion of health-care is seen as an infringement on this. I use to believe in that line, but after living in Europe and Asia for some years, I began to value the public sphere more highly. I just think it makes for a happier society. That's made me far more accepting of changes to our system. But I know that's not everyone's experience.