You certainly have a natural right not to be thrown into an arcane system that you don't understand, to answer for charges that you don't understand, while being forced to make incriminating statements against yourself, to face cruel and unusual punishment as a result, and in the event that you are found innocent, to be tried repeatedly for the same charge until you are finally found guilty. Building legal representation for defendants into the system when the state hauls you into its court and attempts to throw you in a cage isn't even in the same universe as telling everyone they are entitled to avail themselves of other people's skills, equipment, drugs, and so on free of charge.

All it takes is a quick Google of "insert western nation here" and "health care costs" to see that it's a huge problem everywhere. America's system is more screwed up than most, not because of private insurance alone as you suggest, but because of the entire third party payer system. Medicare and Medicaid are a massive part of that. And thanks to Obamacare, the private insurance market has just been turned into a fucked up form of for-profit welfare, so shit is going to get worse before it gets better. The fact that Democrats want European style health care without including European style tort reform because they are so beholden to trial lawyers doesn't help.

You do realize that most other nations have populations and economies comparable to our individual states, don't you? Saying that a tiny, ethnically homogeneous country like Norway can swing a massive nanny state at the national level, so America with its 310 million wildly diverse citizens should, too, is bordering on the imbecilic.

And downsizing a bloated, wasteful government is not at all like chopping off a healthy limb to lose weight, it's like losing weight because you need to lose weight. Your comparison is so absurd, I had to read it twice to make sure you actually said something that ludicrous.

Saying that you have a "natural right" to not be thrown into an arcane system just doesn't make sense. By your logic, you should have a right not to be put into any sort of system at all. The right to representation is a right that was introduced as a protection. It's easy to invent "natural rights" for any actual right... but the problem is, each time you do it, you end up also introducing other rights that weren't meant to be there.

I do agree that a major problem with the American health system is that it's not single-payer in any sense. And "European style health care"? No, how about Canadian? Australian? Neither country is "european", and both have far better outcomes, universal coverage, and lower costs. Australia's system is probably the better fit for America, having a private health insurance industry as an option on top of the basic public coverage. And you keep saying "western nation", but I'm not convinced that you're actually looking at it fairly. Have you even looked at Australia? Yes, our health care costs are increasing... but it's a proportional increase. And a lot of other "western nations" aren't having any more of a problem than Australia. I'll tell you what - have a read of this:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/health-care-costs-in-australia/3629464 (the "transcript")

"Our total health expenditure has increased as a proportion of GDP over a number of years. It was 7.9% about a decade ago and it's now 9.4% of GDP in 2009/10 but that's what we're also seeing in most other oeCD countries and in fact as the standard of living increases what you expect to see is that more of that is spent on health. And we're also starting to see the impact of the ageing population."

So basically, Australia's increasing total health care costs aren't particularly due to rising prices or things like that, but due to Australians paying more in order to sustain a higher standard of living, plus the aging population requiring more health care (whereas before, they were just dying). And the implication is that it's true elsewhere, too.

And I'm sorry, but the statistical difference between 5 million and 300 million is miniscule, it makes little difference to the overall behaviour. And I really don't see what ethnicity has to do with the ability for people to get along... unless you're claiming that America is inherently racist. Also, Norway has a significant immigrant population, with the current count working out to over 13% of the population. Also worth noting is that I'm not saying that Norway has it perfect, or that America should imitate Norway in everything... but perhaps America could get off its damn high horse for a few seconds, and look at where other countries are outperforming them? You know, try to improve your country by taking the best and most effective policies from other countries?

And no, the "small government" argument is akin to chopping off limbs. Government doesn't need to be smaller, it needs to be more efficient - it needs to cut away excess fat, through sensible policies. Let me put it this way - the Libertarian attitude would be "government needs to get out of healthcare". That would be cutting off a limb. On the other hand, "government needs to clean up its handling of health care" would involve cutting away the fat, leaving the healthy stuff behind.

Let me try another analogy on you. Trying to make government smaller is treating the symptom, rather than the cause. Government is bloated because of problems within government. Making government smaller doesn't fix those problems, it just puts more strain on the budget, which only serves to make it even more of a problem. On the other hand, if you fix the cause, the actual problems within government, then government will get smaller on its own, and what's left will be a much healthier government.

And that's where the analogy with obesity comes back in. If you get on the scales, and see that you're far overweight, you see the symptom that you're too heavy. A healthy response is to identify why you're so fat, and address those problems. An unhealthy response is to identify quick ways to remove weight (like cutting off a limb) - not only will it not address the problems, but it will actually make it even harder to address them.

But hey, why bother putting forward an argument, when you can just resort to ad hominem? Why explain your reasoning, when you can call the other person's argument "imbecilic" and leave it at that?

1. Firstly, I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist. I think that government should exist to protect the rights of citizens, although that's about all it should do. Well, that's what being hauled into court on some charges is all about. (In theory. Too often it's that you've consumed a banned substance or something.) When your actions are alleged to have infringed on another citizen's rights, it has to be sussed out somehow. But it's only fair that you understand the charges against you and are competently represented, and by logic, that the burden of proof be with the prosecution as always should be when someone is making a claim. You can't prove a negative and all that. That's not some arbitrary bullshit that the government or "society" created, it's an attempt to balance people's rights. It isn't perfect even in theory, it could be worlds better in practice, but it's a necessary evil if people are going to coexist.

I obviously don't think  that health care is a right, because I believe in natural rights and that those are what government should be about protecting. But when you say that health care is a right and then proceed to dismiss the notion of natural rights altogether because "rights are just things that government or 'society' creates", then what are you even arguing? Health care is only a right if it's decided that it's a right, then. If Country A says it is, then it is in Country A. If Country B says it's not, then it's not in Country B.

On a more philosophical level... Thomas Jefferson died of pneumonia. But didn't he have a right to azithromycin? If not, did he only not have a right to it because it didn't exist at the time? Are you entitled to more things than he was just because they exist? If there exists some super rare, super expensive cure for AIDS or cancer, how entitled are people to that if health care really is a right?

2. Don't be so pedantic about my use of the word "European". I only said European because Democrats are always arguing that we should emulate "Europe". Usually Sweden, if they have to pick a country, because it sounds nicest. No one ever says Canadian or Australian because everyone here is too familiar with Canadians coming here for health care because of their long ass waits to want to emulate that system, and most people think Australia is just a fictional place from those Crocodile Dundee movies - myself included.

I think the cost containment problem in the US is also a factor of, not just the contrived public-private system and usual fat, aging population, etc., but also the rest of the world piggybacking on American medical technology and drugs just like they do with our military. It's hardly a secret that the EU, for example, requires pharmaceutical companies to drop the prices on their drugs after a while "in solidary with the people". And it's also no secret that pharmaceutical companies will always be protected from both government-mandated price controls and *gasp* real market forces in the US, so this is where they make all the money that allows them to keep researching and manufacturing the new drugs that everyone will use in the future.

3. You really don't see a problem with trying to bind hundreds of millions of people of different races, religions, and perspectives together into a one size fits all system? Like, the fact that it always fails pretty spectacularly, maybe? As long as nice little countries like Norway and Sweden have been comprised of people who all felt like they were one people, things got along relatively swimmingly. (Well, for a little while. It wasn't all that long ago they were emigrating like crazy, like pretty much all European nations.) But now that they have a high standard of living and their birth rates have fallen off and all of their population growth comes from immigration, you're seeing it start to fray the fabric of society. It isn't about race (and ethniticty =/= race, btw), but it's about assimilation, and race and ethnicity are certainly barriers to assimilation.

Government works best when it is small and transparent and local. When the head of your government is at most just a few towns over from you, he probably doesn't feel so removed from you. You and he probably even have had remarkably similar experiences, and he can represent you that much better. If he sucks, your vote counts a hell of a lot more in removing him from power. In short, he's a hell of a lot more accountable. When your head of state is an impreious asshole in a crime-ridden shithole on the eastern seaboard of a gigantic nation, he's nowhere near as accountable and is therefore much more likely to remain an imperious asshole.

So, yes, I think it's utterly imbecilic to compare governing Sweden with the governing fucking Roman Empire. Larger nations require more local autonomy because there inevitably comes a tipping point when people feel so estranged from the national government issuing edicts from on high that they turn against it. Just shouting, "Y U NO GOVERN SMARTER???" isn't really a solution to that; increased local control is. Autonomy is freedom, and a wise man once said that freedom is the right of all sentient beings. Then he turned into a truck.

This is one of those things based off your own personal philosphy again isn't it rather then being based off of any sort of actual logical definition of rights?

There are two kinds of rights.

Natrual Rights... and Legal Rights.

Healthcare in many countries is a legal right.

It however is NOT  a natural intrinsic right.

Therefore you can not argue Healthcare should be universal by law because it's a right.

Because it's not a right until it becomes a law.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

I feel like you've never taken a course in statistics.

The differnece between 5 million and 300 million isn't significant when measuring individual behavior of a representative population.

Australia is NOT a represenative population of America.

5 million to 300 million IS statistically different in orginizational statistics.... as is the pure size of the US compaired to say... Australia, because it requires far more layers of beuracracy and the larger a workforce gets away from Dunbar's number, the less efficent it becomes.   (and society for that matter.)

I'd suggest readings into Orginzational Psychology and Orginzational Sociology for more information on why it's easier to work systems on a small group, rather then a large one.

1. To be blunt, anarchists and libertarians are remarkably similar in most of their beliefs. But I won't delve into that too much. I dismiss "natural rights" because it implies that there is some sort of inherent right that comes with being a human... no, there isn't. There isn't a single right that humans have innately. You have no innate right to life, or to liberty, or to justice, or to security, or to profit, or anything else. Not counting what you might call a religious right (and thus, dependent on religion), rights are a human construct, developed by society to improve society. And yes, if a country doesn't provide a right to something, then that right doesn't exist there. That said, there is the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is supposed to apply to all member states of the UN.

Article 25 is the relevant part for this discussion: "(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."

Note that the US voted in favour of the declaration.

And you seem to confuse "right to health care" with "right to the absolute best in health care that can ever exist". No, the right to health care has to do with a standard of living. Wherever it is reasonably possible, effort should be made to protect every person's health. Your health care should not be dependent on how much money you have (as you seem to believe). In theory, the absolute best of health care for every person would be preferred... but idealism only gets you so far. So we place restrictions on that health care, in order to balance cost with benefit. And then, if a person desires more health care than can be provided in a cost-effective manner, then they have private options.

2. Let's be honest - most Americans use "European" because they don't really comprehend the distinctions. They aren't willing to look outside of their bubble at all, and thus they dismiss all other options as "European", when Europe is made up of a variety of different countries in a variety of different situations. Indeed, when I see bits of American media talking about the situation in Greece and Italy, it is generally spoken of as "European instability". No, Greek and Italian instability. Germany is very stable, as are the scandinavian countries, and the UK is handling things fairly well, too (Republic of Ireland, not so much). And as you point out, most Americans aren't even aware of Australia beyond a few movies and a few stereotypes. Try looking at Australia, and see just how much we improved on your system. Try looking at New Zealand, in fact - they're backwards in a lot of ways, but in some ways they've even beaten out Australia. Now look at some scandinavian countries, and at South Korea, and at China, and at Japan, and at South Africa, and at Turkey, and at Switzerland, and at Germany, and at Russia, and at India and Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Argentina and Zimbabwe. Examine each and every country, and try to figure out where, if anywhere, they've got something better than the US.

And no, it isn't about "piggy-backing" on the US, any more than Apple is piggy-backing on Microsoft in terms of OS development. Americans like to make broad claims about how all the drugs and all the research happens in private American pharmaceutical companies... but it's not actually true. Most of the time, US drug companies just put out broad patents that allow them to muscle other countries.

As I've pointed out before, the biggest reason why drug development is so expensive to begin with in America is that you've privatised it all. Here in Australia, most research is done at public universities. When one university has a program doing research on a particular problem, they communicate with other universities also researching that problem. They discuss the problem together, and split the research load between them. Private companies have no impetus to talk to other private companies, or to agree to split research load (indeed, there are laws that pretty much prevent it) - as a result, the drug companies are all duplicating each others' work, and each drug company has to not only charge enough to recoup the cost of development of the drug they successfully develop, but also the cost of research spend towards all of the drugs that another company beat them to.

The top pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, is American. But the second-biggest is a Swiss company. Third is American, but fourth is German and fifth is from the UK. Regarding that Swiss company... know what they made? Heard of Ritalin? Voltaren? Lamasil? The German one? Thank them for Aspirin, among other things. My point is, America isn't the only place that pharmaceuticals come from - this is just yet another example of American worldview.

3. First thing's first - there is no such thing as "Race". That's a human construct that has outlived its usefulness. Ethnicity is a much more meaningful concept, referring to the specific place from which their ancestors originated (for instance, my ethnicity is half British and half... it's hard to be exact, so I'll just say Jewish). I have very pale skin... but my father has olive skin. Obama's mother has pale skin. Skin colour, which is the basis on which Americans judge this mythological concept of "race", is meaningless. Racism is the belief that there is such a thing as "race", and that it has some sort of value with regards to judgment of people.

So no, I don't see how "trying to bind hundreds of millions of people of different races" is of any significance whatsoever. Here in Australia, we have a sizeable number of people who are not of European descent (meaning, not of the pale skin common from that region)... and to all of us (including them), they're no more or less Australian, and, except for the racists and the bigots, we all treat each other equally and with respect. It simply isn't a relevant factor. As for religion... America's biggest mistake was the official "separation of church and state". Australia doesn't have such an official separation, and yet we have a much higher rate of irreligion, and a much lower rate of religious people trying to enforce their beliefs on the rest of the country. We have an atheist prime minister, and religion is rarely relevant in politics.

And if you're looking for a "one-size-fits-all" system, then there's your immediate problem. You're trying to create a single, monolithic system (or rather, you're trying to argue against it). That shouldn't be how it works. You want an example? Sharia courts. They shouldn't be forced on anybody, but if both parties of a situation that involve no others agree to be subject to Sharia law (in addition to regular law, and subject to the same protections), then why not allow it to be available to those people? It allows muslims to follow their religion without either splitting the rule of law (since it's opt-in and doesn't eliminate the regular laws) or breaking any rights that society grants to the people within it. The solution is to have an adaptive system that seeks the best for the people, rather than some monolithic system that tries to impose itself on the people (as America currently has). And "monolithic" has nothing to do with size, and everything to do with specific implementation.

Government works best when it's transparent, and yes, local. That's why you elect a representative, and why there are multiple levels of government, the number of levels being dependent on the size and population of the country. But it's all about getting the balance of things right. Too fine-grained a government (that is, too much local) results in duplication of efforts (much like the case of pharmaceutical companies), increased bureaucracy (in that you need more people running the government in each local area). Too broad a government (that is, too nation-wide) results in lack of adaptability and too much concentration of power. But I'll tell you right now, America is too far towards the fine-grained side - your biggest problem is the sheer volume of bureaucracy resulting from so many layers of government and so many variations in rules, which only then produces more bureaucracy as the broader national government has to maintain all of these lower levels, as well as apply the sorts of things that need to be broad and sweeping. And the lack of transparency is a major problem in America, too.

Also, your system that has one guy with a massive amount of power (your President) is one of the other big flaws. Try looking at other democratic systems, and think about where the weaknesses in your own are found. And no, removing power from the national government isn't a solution - it only leads to more problems. One of the biggest reasons why America's primary and secondary education system is so weak (as demonstrated, among other things, by Americans' lack of knowledge of the outside world) is that America demands this stupid local education system. Most other countries, including all of the ones that outperform America, have an education system that is broad yet adaptive. That is, there is a national (or at least state-level) curriculum, but then there's room within the curriculum to give schools and areas the ability to adjust what is taught to suit the children of the area.

There is a famous quote that says something along the lines of "Those who would choose a little temporary security over essential freedoms deserve neither". What wasn't said was that you can switch the words "security" and "freedom" in the statement, and it remains true. Essential freedoms and essential protections should both be highly valued. Libertarians try to switch essential protections for temporary freedoms. It just doesn't work.

There is actually a country in the world that follows Libertarian ideals. Do you know which country that is?

What is a "natural intrinsic right"? You will notice that, in your wikipedia link, it has three major proponents of "natural rights" - Hobbes, Locke, and Paine. All three were religious (Hobbes was called an Atheist by some at the time, but that term at the time meant "non-christian", and he always defended himself from such claims, and Paine was a Deist).

The only way for a "natural right" to exist is for it to be imposed by some higher power. Otherwise, there really is nothing that a person is inherently protected from, and rights are a form of protection. The right to a fair trial is a protection from an unfair trial. The right to life is a protection against murder. And quite simply, at this point in the development of society, healthcare should also be a right, we should protect a person's quality of life.

It is important to understand Locke's views, and the ideas behind rights-based ethics, because this ethics is at the core of modern western civilization.  Decisions on what laws to pass, and so on, ar argued out of this.  The rights given by society, and laws, flow out of the basic rights seen as being core to humans.  You can have a Libertarian view where every right can be bargained away in exchange for something else though.  And in modern western civilization the rights are found primarily in individuals, and not collectively.  From these individual rights flows out collective rights also.  But in modern western civilization (classic liberal), the rights of the individual override all other rights.

One of the fallouts of not having a universal safety net and welfare system, with a lot of answering for consequences, is that tort reform gets taken out of the equation.  Because you run an adversarial system, where if you lose, you suffer, people will use the courts as justice.  The courts act as a bounty system and exert fines on individuals to deter bad behavior.  And individuals are rewarded by getting these paydays, because it encouraged them to hunt down corruption, and if harmed by it, make the evil doers pay.  Unless there is a system by which individuals can be taken care of, if they are harmed by bad consequences, you will be running this bounty system.

In regards to Obamacare, it isn't what Obama ran on.  The original idea was to have a government run insurance program that people could be part of.  Well, out came opposition from the Republican side, and the insurance industry, so Obama adopted the GOP alternative, proposed by the Heritage Foundation, and others (heck even Romney ran it), to end up regulating the insurance industry with tighter requirements, and also mandating people pay for insurance, or have coverage some way.  

I actually do suck at statistics, but my use of "statistical difference" wasn't intended to actually be a statement of statistical comparison. What I was saying was that, while the difference between 5 people and 300 people is a dramatic difference as far as how things are run is concerned, the difference between 5 million and 300 million is negligible - that is, the difficulty in running a country of 5 million and a country of 300 million are comparable. And I'm guessing you've fallen for the same problem as most Americans, thinking Australia is tiny. Australia isn't 5 million, it's much closer to 25 million. And while it's not representative of America, it is comparable because of similar culture (not same, but similar), similar levels of multiculturalism, similar nation size, and similar concerns with regard to indigenous people. Of all of the other countries in the world, Australia is probably the one with the greatest number of similarities with America (likely closely followed by Canada, who are even more similar to Australia).

As for Dunbar's number, you've again proven my point, really. Dunbar's number is around 150. Compared to 150, 5 million and 300 million are very similar numbers. The best way to demonstrate this is using a logarithmic scale. Let's use base 10.

log(150) = 2.18
log(5000000) = 6.7
log(300000000) = 8.48

There's a much bigger difference between 150 and the others than there is between 5 million and 300 million. And in fact, I'd argue that Dunbar's number is a good way to get a sense of how the heirarchy of democracy should work - each scale should be of the order of 150, with roughly three layers in a country of 5 million and roughly four layers in a country of 300 million.

Also, if America's biggest problem is that it's too big... well then, split into a number of smaller nations already. Either the US is a "great nation" and the scale isn't a problem, and thus the government should be big, or the US is a failed experiment to begin with, and you need to split out into a number of smaller countries.

If I may offer a possibility...
Group together California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington for about 52 million
Group together Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana for about 50 million
Group together Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC, and New Jersey for about 61 million
Group together Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida for about 64 million
Group together Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana for about 32 million
Group together Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah for about 49 million...
Let Alaska and Hawaii choose if they want to be part of one of those, or be part of Canada or be independent nations.

Mind you, the main reason I do this is to emphasise that you could do it, and you could begin each new nation with a temporary adapted version of your current constitution, to last until each nation has created its own. And if you still want to feel part of a united group, then feel free to have a North American Union... Canada might be more interested in joining such a system, with the other states being much closer to their own size.

The other reason I do it is to mock the double-talk.