"Edward Dolan" wrote in message
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"ATP*" wrote in message
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"Edward Dolan" wrote in message
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It is a never ending mystery to me why I poke about liberalism like a
cat with a mouse. I want it to work but it seems like it never does.

I want a single payer health care system just like England has. But that
is almost as far as it goes with me. I consider health care a right, not
something you have to pay for in order to get it. It falls into the same
category as K-12 education. It is NOT socialism any more than public
education is.

I think it is perfectly acceptable that the rich finance this, just as
property owners finance public education. After all, they would not be
rich if situated in a society like Afghanistan.

I sometimes wonder how far apart Tom Sherman and I are on the
fundamentals. I have spent my life thinking on these things and in the
end the welfare state makes the most sense to me provided society is
rich enough to make it possible. But still we NEED the capitalist goose
to lay the golden eggs. I wonder why Tom Sherman can't see it like I do?

Universal health care doesn't equal the welfare state and is certainly
compatible with capitalism. I don't think everybody has a "right" to
health care, I think it's a practical necessity and our responsibility to
reform the current system.

The cost of providing education to everyone is simply enormous and so
would the cost of providing health care to everyone. We are talking about
a huge chunk of the economy. It is indeed the welfare state for government
to provide these two basic services. The best way to justify it is simply
to make it a right by virtue of citizenship.

Regards,

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota

In the legal sense, it would become a right. What I meant is that it's not a
natural right, in the same sense that we regard the pursuit of life, liberty
and happiness as inalienable rights.