Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason

Well, there are plenty of real reasons, but this is a good one:

I’m perfectly willing to provide subsidized health care to people who are suffering due to no fault of their own.  But in those cases -- which, unfortunately, constitute perhaps a majority of all cases -- where the unwellness is a consequence of the patient’s own misdeeds, bad habits, or stupid choices, I feel a deep-seated resentment that the rest of us should pick up the tab to fix medical problems that never should have happened in the first place.

I’m speaking specifically of medical problems caused by:

- Obesity
- Cigarette smoking
- Alcohol abuse
- Reckless behavior
- Criminal activity
- Unprotected promiscuous sex
- Use of illicit drugs
- Cultural traditions
- Bad diets

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband.  Fine by me.  And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above.  That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox.  Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences. [...]

Do you want that?  No.  Do I want that?  No.  And that’s the point.  Instituting a single-payer universal health-care system, or even a watered-down version as the government is now proposing, compels me to become a meddlesome busybody in your personal choices. [...]

That’s what socialized medicine does: it turns each of us into a little fascist.  A nagging nanny who tells other people what to do and how to live.