A kind of footnote to #120 ......
Call me a "Left" Libertarian if you like, but I believe my advocacy the Public Option (and ultimately single-payer) is a logical extension of, at the very least, the pop-characterization of the Libertarian Party--"live and let live"--which is largely true. I do my private thing, and you're free to do yours. Just don't dare commit any Force or Fraud upon me or my property, or that of others ... I'll get the law on you. That's what we pay taxes for.
Old age, disability, disease, etc. seem to me to fall into a special if not unique category of FORCE that we need protection from: we have just about zero control over these adverse circumstances that are pretty much "forced" upon us. And in this light, they are a violation of the very first principle stated in the preamble of National Libertarian Platform: "Right to Life" (John Locke's Liberty and Property follow--Jefferson swiped them too). So ... Is it that much of a stretch to look to our government to protect us from those "accidents of fate"--again: old age, disability, disease--for ourselves and our fellow taxpayers? Not.
If not a moral imperative, let's bow to a purely selfish one. A major reason that private health insurance costs Americans exorbitantly is that it's "front-loaded" to pay for the million upon millions of the un- and under-insured. Universal Health Care would save everybody money. And just think of all the American lives we could have kept in good health here at home, if we hadn't wasted 900 billion bucks on death and dying in the Middle East.
Live and let live.
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