Also linked to from Krugman's blog:

Capitalist shitheads! Fuckin' A!

Paul Krugman linked to this BusinessWeek story on health care credit companies and their costs to the uninsured. Read it, it's a good article. Even more ridiculous are the several comments accusing fucking *BusinessWeek* of having an anti-capitalist, anti-free-market bias.

That's not Kool-Aid you're drinking anymore, it's pure bullshit. How's it taste?

One commenter made a very good point:

So in this way health care becomes not just a paid for service but a way to create and profit from debt, thus joining the remainder of the economy. The difference being that almost all other spending is discretionary (if perhaps not wise) and its cost is definable and "choosable" prior to the purchase. And, finally, what is most discouraging is that the geniuses who designed this almost certainly consider themselves good people.

The comments on Krugman's post were much better, and seemed more nuanced as well - and hopefully that isn't because they match my prevailing patterns of thought. Still, they begin with this:

The current political leadership told us in 2000:

“Bush is the first CEO president. He will run this country like a business.”

Only in America did people think that was a good thing.

Despite being a health-care provider looking at a career of private practice, I'm becoming even more in favor of universal healthcare. The outcomes are simply better, for every segment of the population, and usually for lower cost. I realize this will likely impact my future practice, but I'd still be making a more than decent living doing work I enjoy and doing good for people. Of course, orthodontics is effectively elective care and as such is unlikely to be covered by any universal plan.

I'm wondering how healthcare providers in countries with universal healthcare are doing within their systems. It's something I'll have to look into.

Meanwhile, I read an argument years ago in an ethics textbook which went something like this - I'm paraphrasing from memory, so be nice: A free society is one in which the personal choices of the largest number of people are maximized to the greatest extent. A person in pain or suffering from a painful or debilitating or otherwise serious medical condition is in many ways incapable of free choice as a starving man or a man with a gun to his head would be. Yes, there are still choices to be made, but if it can be called "free choice" then every society, even the most totalitarian, is "free." In a just society, then, resource allocation would be directed first toward adequately meeting the material needs of the whole population before other discretionary desires were addressed.

Of course, the mechanism by which those needs are met doesn't have to be governmental, but right now charity doesn't seem to be cutting it - especially if you read that BusinessWeek article I linked to above and noted how non-profit hospitals are still selling their patients' medical debts to predatory financial lenders.