Eliminating "such" AND substituting perhaps"SIMILAR" for "THE SAME WAY" could have conveyed your meaning more in line with your subsequent"explanation" in your latter comment.
The intent is not semantical criticism , but rather semantical clarity which I assume was your original goal.

"Dense as I am, the implication of your first sentence of your last comment is not lost on me.
Of course the notion was completely rejected in my previous response in the form of obvious sarcasm.[lol]
I mean you no harm.I will consider your sensibilities in future communications.

Apologies for being less than compassionate. I have never quite understood the strategy that some people seem to follow in discussions, and that you seemed to follow here - to draw seemingly absurd extrapolations from some stated position, then ask - do you really mean that?

Actually what you did was even less understandable to me. It wasnt just asking, it was assuming and asserting that I must be intending those absurd extrapolations.

Somehow I suspect that you know perfectly well that I do not believe that people have no rights to their own earnings, or that government is smarter than people or any of the other points you made. So why waste my time claiming that that is what I must believe?

The fact that you can find some route to absurdity in a particular postion (something that can be done for any position on any issue), doesnt mean that that is what the person means. What is wrong with dealing with positions as they are presented? If you have legitimate questions about what it all means, or what the larger context is, or what logic the person is using, then why not simply ask?

Sure, but Medicare also covers anyone and everyone who qualifies so that means it is hard to save enough money on administration and management to offset rapidly rising expenditures for actual health care.

That only further supports my point. It doesn't discriminate in coverage yet it still costs less, its costs rise at a slower rate, and keeps management costs lower. That's a win in every category.

Further, I've seen some evidence to suggest that such comparisons between private and public health care are not "apples to apples" with it going in favor of public.

Care to share that evidence?

But that isn't the debate, the debate is about universal coverage, the uninsured, etc.

The size of governments role in health care is part of the debate in most cases implicitly. Unless you are talking to an economic libertarian it is generally second or third of the big three issues being discussed here. First is who to cover and how (role of government implicit), after that are costs and the relative role of government. At any given point one or the other is second while the other is third.

Sorry, it isn't my opinion it is a definition.

The problem with that is that it is only a hard and fast definition in a theoretical framework. In the physical world there is a continuum between public goods and private goods. Some goods are more public and others more private. In essence the supply of the good at any point in time ends up determining whether something is considered a public or private good. Add enough excess supply and private goods become public goods. For the foreseeable future health care will remain towards the more private than public end of that continuum. The argument boils down to where on that continuum is health care now, where do you think health care should be, and what you are willing to invest to accomplish that.
IMO, from an ethical standpoint health care should be a common good and we should address supply issues to make it less rivalrous, increasing the good to the public and decreasing costs.

Here is a link that should work.

and Medicare costs less than equivalent private insurance and has less management costs. So, the cheaper health insurance, whose costs are growing at a slower rate, and is less top heavy with management costs is government run.

Sure, but Medicare also covers anyone and everyone who qualifies so that means it is hard to save enough money on administration and management to offset rapidly rising expenditures for actual health care. Further, I've seen some evidence to suggest that such comparisons between private and public health care are not "apples to apples" with it going in favor of public.

Really? We aren't debating how large the governments role in health care should be? All those health care plans put forward with different levels of government involvement must be mirages.

But that isn't the debate, the debate is about universal coverage, the uninsured, etc. At best the issue of how much of a role government should play is secondary if not tertiary.

Ironman,

Unfortunately for your argument the CBO is not using a linear projection in that they are assuming the discrepency between GDP and health care growth rates will shrink overtime. They just don't shrink fast enough.

Tano,

Sorry, it isn't my opinion it is a definition. Your view however, is purely opinion and also wrong.

Are you seriously this dense, or do you simply have way too much time on your hands?

An analogy is an analogy. It does not set up an equivalence relationship. The reason one uses analogies is to point out similar aspects, not to claim that all aspects are similar.

One does not "carry analogies to their logical conclusion" - to do so would make them equivalencies, not analogies.

If we declare "war on cancer" does that mean that we must carry the analogy to its supposed logical conclusion, and sign up all researchers in the military? No, most people understand what analogies are.

I was referring (and stated twice) to the underlying moral ethic - that healthcare, like defense, should be a public good. That says nothing whatsoever about how that public good is to be realized. Your claim that I am thus advocating that the military and the healthcare system must both be run int the same way, either both privatly or both by government, is entirely your own extrapolation from some assumption that you carry around in your mind, not from anything that I said.

QUOTE,
"" because defense is accepted, prima facie, as a national concern. Some would consider the health of our citizens to be SUCH a national concern as well.""

Are you sure you want a privately run mercenary army?

QUOTE,
""If we chose to view health care in the SAME WAY that we viewed national defense""

According to your statements..either health care should be the purview of the government, or national defense should not!

As for the point of government being smarter than anyone, I guess I just can't imagine someone WANTing to surrender autonomy to lesser competence!

Any generalities stated in my "rant" should not be construed as ad hominem. Quite the contrary, I often enjoy your commentary.

I may not have heard what you MEANT, but I heard what you SAID.

Kindly leave me out of the role of foil for your rants. I said nothing about socialism, or the government running anything - there is no necessary reason why healthcare could not be guaranteed to all but run mainly by private players.

Who said anything about government being smarter than anyone, or taking everyone's earning?

Maybe if you actually started listening to what people are really saying, or reading their words with care, your thinking would develop beyond the level of mindless ranting.

Why is national defense a public good? Because we choose to make it so. We dont distinguish one part of the country from another - such that if Alaska were attacked, and our military resources were used to defend it, no one would think to claim that Alaska is making use of our finite defense spending - we would simply consider that the nation as a whole were being attacked and the nation as a whole were being defended.

It need not be that way. We could task each state with its own defense, with the federal military as a back up, and then complain if one state ended up using that back-up more than others. Military resources are finite, and their deployment for defense of one region limits what is available for others.

Of course, we dont think like that, because defense is accepted, prima facie, as a national concern. Some would consider the health of our citizens to be such a national concern as well.

If we chose to view health care in the same way that we viewed national defense - that we will defend all our citizens against disease as a right of citizenship, irrespective of their economic situation, then it would be as much of a public good as is defense.

The economists use terms to describe current reality. I do think that most people would prefer a different reality, based on thier moral sense - that health care should be a public good.

No, Tano, it's definitional not ideological. A public good is one that is non-rivalrous and non-excludeable. Healthcare is by definition a private good.

Please. As if the definitional cannot be the ideological. At the end of the day, politics, which is what we're really talking about here, depends on categorizations (definitions) that are through and through ideologically based. In fact, I would say you're begging the question: Ought health care to be a private or a public good? And thus we get to the politics.

hat Steve, is not "reality". It is your opinion.

No, Tano, it's definitional not ideological. A public good is one that is non-rivalrous and non-excludeable. Healthcare is by definition a private good.