The market requries that the government enforce contracts and protect property rights. Nothing more.
The market for healthcare requires significantly more than that. It requires anti-trust enforcement for the insurers and hospitals, enforcement of requirements for professional certifications, provision of safety and efficacy testing for new drugs and treatments, exemptions from traffic laws for ambulances, etc. etc. etc.
This is not some simple commodities trade we're talking about here.
Then it depends on what you mean by reform. If you mean less government involvement and more privatization and free market, then that's great. If it's more "universal", then no.
No, privatization and reduction of government's role have resulted in exploding costs without comparable improvement in outcomes. This has been occurring for years now, so is not a matter for speculation. You're offering nothing besides reality-free affirmations of ideology here.
One could easily have said to the Jews: "So what, Germany has been a Nazi country for years now. Get over it"
Way to go for Godwin.
And a Jew would have been just as assinine to advance "But that's Nazism!" as an argument against a government policy in Nazi Germany, anyhow.
How would they be any healthier? They're wealthy: they can already afford health care.
I said they'd live in a healthier
society, not that they personally would be healthier.
Although their increased wealth, and the decreased cost of care, would presumably result in increased health for them as well.
And you can force "benefits" on them and make them pay, but that's not any more legitimate than washing your car without permission and forcing you to pay.
And yet it's apparently legitimate enough for us to apply progressive income taxation.
The wealthy benefit more from the system than anyone else, by definition, and so have a greater responsibility to maintain and advance it.
More to the point, a good reform of healthcare would lower costs for everyone. Everyone - even the rich - would end up with
more money in their pockets.
Would you consider it illegitimate if I washed your car, and then gave you $10 for the trouble?
Again, it's a parasitism by the vast majority of non-wealthy, moronic people on the entrepreneurial and ownership class.
For it to be "parasitism" it would have to harm the "entrepreneurial and ownership class." Healthcare reform would benefit everyone, in all classes.
Which makes it symbiosis.
I see no reason why the wealthy businessman ought to pay for the lowly lazy pothead gang-banger to get health treatment.
He already does that, so that's irrelevant to the issue. Although the reason is that any sane wealthy businessman would rather live in a society where people have healthcare - it's a nicer place to live, and he'd stand to make more money to boot, in the long run.
Universal health care would mean that the wealthy businessman pays
less for the healthcare of the poor, while getting wealthier himself. And it would create more wealthy businessmen, as the leading cause of individual bankruptcy would be eliminated, along with the leading cause of corporate payroll growth.
Universal health care? Bad.
I'd point out here that Universal Health Care does not have to be government-operated healthcare, or even government-operated health insurance (although those options seem to work better than government-mandated health care). So you're literally saying that it would be a bad thing, in the abstract, for everyone to have access to health care, independent of how that is achieved. Do you really think that?
Less government involvement, less corporatism and protectionism, less bureaucracy = good.
That's exactly what we're talking about. A universal, single-payer healthcare system would eliminate the multiple, overlapping layers of bureaucracy that comprise the private insurance system, as well as got the corporate protectionism that sustains them. And in doing so, it would save everyone - except for the insurance companies - big money.
Or are you only bothered by bureaocracy when it's located in government?
The only people that want government control are lazy, irresponsible people that have no problem spending others' money.
More naked ideology.
/yawn