Patience

I have to admit, health care is one of the only issues I really know anything about (What? Research?) and I find the irony of beating the dead horse about them beating the dead horse delightfully inane and spiteful. So let's not beat around the bush:

It is my personal opinion that health care reform is like having a baby; if it's time for it to come out there's not much you can do about it. However, under this tortured metaphor, there is still the chance that the mother could have done one too many belly flops or taken too much thalidomide, or the baby could be born perfectly healthy but still brain itself on the floor when it slither's out of its mother's womb, so in the interest of having a baby with the least amount of birth defects or mental damage, it's important to actually think things through and stop complaining about old people's patience (so they tell me).

By this reasoning, we can assume the intelligent opposition to health care reform want's to wait a bit before deciding to take the responsibility of a child because they want to do it right.

The first valid reason is that progress comes with a price tag. Yes, we could make everyone rich and happy and healthy and free from fear and malady, but forcing people to fight for a doctor's time means Doctors can do a more adequate job. With so many people fighting to spend money, any newcomer to the field can be sure to be motivated to do well, because if he sucks, people will turn to next year's graduates. This also motivates progress, because, no matter how expensive gene therapy or or stem cell research (Screw morality! SCIENCE MARCHES ONWARD!) can get, some rich person will cough up the dough, and fighting for a piece of bread and private grants someone will make a breakthrough, which may eventually help all of us, like penicillin or advanced cancer treatment. Inevitably, breakthroughs demand competition (look at how productive the Cold War was. Now everyone can have a magic talking I-phone that's more valuable than you are), and a cure for cancer or thalidomide babies necessitates that some poor sod has to live with his cancer or his baby having birth defects.

Secondly, it's not 'right' to force someone to pay for his neighbor's cancer, broken hip, or thalidomide baby. True, we feel sorry for them, and may or may not voluntarily donate money to help when the insurance pit dries up, but we don't like being forced to give up our hard-gotten gains. We'd never accept the premise that some outside body can force us to pay money to help someone, even if it's nobody's fault, especially not ours. (Here)

Third is the fact that in trying to craft a "universal" health care alternative, you need to provide bits for everyone, which inevitably ties in other issues like illegal immigration and abortion. See yesterday's copy and paste. So let's give it some more time, hmm?

There are several other arguments out there, mostly involving money problems, I don't have much of an interest in them but check them out if it tickles you. There are also many, many stupid argument's out there too, but don't let that dishearten you: 90% of everything is stupid. Just do it right if you're going to be against health care reform. But just for giggles: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_ten_dumbest_arguments_against_health_care_reform



Oh, and because I've been sorta obsessed with it: thalidomide babies.