You know, since I'm feeling under the weather today, I thought we would talk a bit about health care.

Ah, screw it. We won't talk about it today - well, we will, just in short form.

You get sick. You have no job. If you have no job because you are disabled, a child, or elderly....that's one thing. If you have no job because you are....well, whatever....then tough shit.

So we have programs to help the disabled, children and the elderly already. They are called social security and medicare and medicaid (and most states have some other form of medical social support programs available, although the paperwork for these programs ala PeachCare seems to be extraordinarily painful).

Is there a reason we need to help people who have two functioning arms, two functioning legs and a brain that works (more or less)?

Ah, you say, but what about educational levels having an impact upon people's ability to earn a living? If you don't have a college degree, you can't get a good job. Bollix, I say! Not everyone is suited for a higher education. Not everyone needs to go and major in English. And it isn't that people who don't have college degrees are, en masse, lazy. I don't have a college degree. I work for a living, and have held professional jobs since eighteen continuously with only a three month break. And I am not lazy, by anyone's definition.

The thing is this: if we decide to require, at a Federal level, all companies with...more than five employees to provide insurance coverage to their employees (meaning that the company has to pay for it if the employee can't themselves)...that means the cost of doing business will increase. In response, there will be some factor of businesses that are driven out of business or who are forced to decrease in size as a result of the additional spend. No one likes that idea.

The second idea - to fund again at a Federal level some kind of magical insurance fund available to anyone that doesn't have insurance - uh, again, I thought that is why we already have the social programs we do? Do you really want to see yet another deduction come from your check to pay for someone else? Really?

It all comes down to one fundamental question: what are we? Are we a capitalist society? Are we a quasi socialist society? Are we some sort of new hybrid? Are we looking for a replacement for the role previously fulfilled by organized religion and community in the law?

Ethically and morally, I'm not comfortable with letting people suffer because they can't afford to purchase insurance and are thus denied anything but basic healthcare, but I don't want to pay for it personally. I'm pretty sure that makes me a typical American, doesn't it?