[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
I've been out of work for over four months (laid off, Marine and programmer always employed for 22 years straight), I should be supporting Graeme and the welfare state!

What welfare state? I wasn't aware that the equivalent of making health insurance mandatory and universal was the equivalent of a welfare state. I'm not supporting a comfortable lifestyle for those people who don't want to work, and suggesting that I am is nothing more than a strawman. I am suggesting that a person should be guaranteed enough resources so that they aren't malnourished, as long as they don't waste those resources on anything that is unnecssary. If they want to waste that money, then yes, let them starve, but at least try and help their children so that they don't end up like their parents.

This is all really beside the real point though, which is that a universal health care system would do a great deal to help people. Many other industrialized nations manage to both spend less per person on health care, while maintaining a better overall quality of care, and still requiring people to cover the majority of the cost themselves in some way.