I've just got time for one, then I need to run off. I'll get back to the rest later.



We see the world quite differently. I believe I should be allowed to open a business catering to people who smoke. My business, which I create using my own capital and labor on my own property should be allowed to serve whomever I wish. I ought to be able to open a restaurant to cater to people who smoke, as long as I am honest in representing that fact to potential customers. You, as a free person, should be allowed to not eat in my restaurant if smoke and smokers bother you. You could even open a restaurant to serve people who share your preferences.

What is not OK, in my moral framework, is for the majority (non-smokers) to band together and say that nobody should be allowed to smoke in ANY restaurant because we find it distasteful.

This avoids the issue of whether "second hand smoke" is dangerous to others, because ideologically it's not relevant because nobody is forcing you to patronize restaurants that allow smoking. The danger of second hand smoke, incidentally, is not proven.

My position on health care is not that you should have avoided getting cancer somehow, which is silly, but that you should have provided for your (inevitable) declining health if that was a priority for you. And before you mention children, parents should provide for the needs of their kids, and that requirement should be a factor in deciding whether to have kids. Where do you draw the line? Financially irresponsible parents "can't afford" clothes for their kids, so the People provide them?

A free market in health care services (and complete revocation of drug prohibition, including prescribed drugs) would drop costs significantly. The 3rd party payer model breeds corruption. Most importantly, it would place the burden of deciding which treatments were economically justified squarely on the person who both pays and potentially benefits form the treatment.

Yes, rich people will get better health care. This happens in countries with socialized medicine also. It's a fact of life. It's better to be wealthy than poor, which is a motivation to become wealthy by engaging in the process of providing someting of value to society. Removing bureaucracy and corruption of health care will lower the price for everyone.

We do not have a "health care crisis" in America. If we did, you would see people walking down the street with untreated diseases or dying from broken bones or cholera or any of the nonsense you see in the third world where there really is a health care crisis. We have a situation in America where nobody wants to pay for their own health care because it is expensive. Part of the reason it's so expensive is because consumers aren't careful buyers of services when they aren't paying for them. In America, the people who are legitimately hard up get treated; nobody dies in our gutters except by accident. Hospitals do not turn sick people away just because they can't pay for treatment.

In my view of the world, nobody has the "right" to get all of the latest, most advanced, and most expensive treatments available in the world. If that's a priority for you, you ought to be willing to pay for it.