This does not make me think.

Haha, thanks Dick.  I knew exactly what it was going to say after seeing your post.  Of course, why bother talking about what the guy says when you can just dismiss it all?

I wholeheartedly agree with what he says in the first half, on economic policy.  I think his not demonizing of the rich will probably turn off a lot of people already indoctrinated into class warfare, though the things he says are correct.  And Lead, regardless of what he's saying about people fleeing one direction or the other for each country's respective healthcare system, I have yet to hear a convincing argument for why competition is a bad thing (except that it means some groups can/will fail; and you know, we can't let that happen in our government-mandated generosity).

I generally agree with his foreign policy view, though he slides into "Republicans = good, Democrats = bad" towards the end.  He's spot on about the Democrats consistent pandering to poor people, promising the moon, when in reality if their policies actually raised people up it would ultimately damage their base, but the Republicans want power just as much.  I just happen to generally agree with their methods a bit more, but I break ranks when "conservatism" starts to mean "traditional values" and government legislating morality.

If I said "the world is flat" you would dismiss it. That's all this guy is doing, there is no point in talking about it. I listened to about half of it before I got bored, he is not a member of the reality-based community.

You gave up trying to defend your dismissal of free market competition, so I don't know why I'd think you'd do anything different when someone else argues it.

Turning me into a straw-man? I don't dismiss markets, they are clearly good at certain types of things (haven't we been over this?) and often are the best solution (and occasionally, even totally unregulated markets are the best solution!). I don't think ensuring a just health care system is problem that can be answered by the free market, this idiots "arguments" do nothing to convince me otherwise. I think that you should look up who has the best health care system in the world and look at how they have it set up.  You may be surprised that the socialist bogeyman has a bit of le bon marché involved, but it's part of a multi-layered system designed to maximize the distribution of health care to the unhealthy rather than the accumulation of unhealthy people's money. That is precisely the kind of system I would like to see in the US, and considering that we spend more per capita for such substandard shit I think we can one-up them easily.

Okay, I buy that you see healthcare as one of those areas uniquely unsuitable to the free market (like law enforcement and the court system, I assume), but what's really being discussed is how to pay for healthcare, not the actual provision of the service.  In those terms, I don't see how the private insurance industry doesn't function as a competitive market.  If one carrier chooses not to cover a group, it creates an opportunity for someone else to come in and do it.  If you want to compete in an area someone else is already in, you need to offer better services, a lower price, etc.  When the government comes in and provides their own alternative, they basically decimate the market by providing something for a far lower price than a private firm can compete with.  And they do it by justifying taking money from others by force, most often the ones that use the service the least.  They'd be providing a service that an individual would otherwise have to pay for by having someone else's tax dollars doing it, and that's called "income redistribution."

It seems to me the primary argument in favor of government-provided healthcare is that some people either can't afford or choose not to sacrifice to pay for the current options, so the government needs to come in and either make it possible or just outright make them do it (Obama's going to mandate individuals acquire healthcare for children, but not adults).  Our current system absolutely has its problems, but like with housing it stems from government intervention -- current socialized medicine programs like Medicare and Medicaid, tying medical care to employers decades ago and taking the "burden" off the individual (which is BS since you know it comes out of their paycheck anyway) -- not an inherent failure of the free market.

I love it when people demand the government fuck up an area of our life, but because they don't take absolute, totalitarian control and allow some now-broken aspects of the free market to continue function, and then politicians can score points by promising to tighten the government noose even further.  It's all going to come down in a house of cards someday, either when the rich teets these programs leech off decide they've had enough or the programs themselves balloon to such a level you can't possibly tax them into solvency.  But you go on, keep truckin' for social justice, my friend.

Not quite, the Medicare system is slowly failing in this time of global economic crisis. Wait lists for even live-saving transplants and operations are through the roof, and many people I know go to America for a paid surgery. I don't blame them. It's better then sleeping on the hospital floor.