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Gee, a kind word. Thanks. I'm not sure if I will stick around though. My skin is thick enough but I don't need this kind of abuse. I will look elsewhere to help make my decision in November. ~~ Lepidopteran

You're doing fine, Butterfly.

Ignore the Bushist mobs -- for all their numbers and vehemence, they have no power to "fry" your account without the say-so of the Owner and the Moderators of this Forum... and, obviously, the Powers That Be have not seen fit to "fry" your account yet, now, have they?

Instead, focus upon obtaining the answers to the questions which you have advanced. You state the following:

I like John Kerry's message about the need to do something about the people in this country who have no health insurance.

Let me modify your observation somewhat, and address instead the matter of Public Education -- surely we can both agree that Education, like Health Care, is a desirable Good that we should like to see advanced and extended for the benefit of the Public, neh?

Let us, then, address the matter of Public Education first from a Utilitarian perspective, and then from a Principled perspective.

From a UTILITARIAN Perspective -- I, like my elder and younger brothers, was educated in the Government Edumbifikashun Warehouses, an exercise costing my widowed mother (and taxpayers like her) an estimated $7,000 dollars per-child, per-year in combined Federal, State, and Local spending to fund the Publik Skooling system, and incorporating a "one-size-fits-all" curriculum which was in no way specially designed to commensurate with our Traditionalist Protestant culture and history -- let alone anyone else's, really.
HOWEVER, for my youngest brother, my widowed mother was able to secure education in a Private Reformed-Christian Academy, incorporating not only the basic curricula of the Government Edumbifikashun Warehouses as pertains to Math, Science, Literature, and History (and at standards superior to those of the Publik Skools), but also a Classical education in Greek, Latin, Logic, Rhetoric, and Theology in addition thereto... all for a Tuition Cost of approximately $3,900 dollars per-child, per-year.
Given, then, that the Private Sector has demostrated a proven ability to deliver better Educational Services at barely half the Cost of the Government Monopoly, would it not make sense (from a UTILITARIAN perspective) to discuss the Total Privatization of the Public Educational System? I mean, unless you want generation after generation of American Children to continue to suffer and decline...
However, there is also the matter of a PRINCIPLED Perspective. Suppose that Five Families are congregated together in a Room (we shall call this Room, a "Nation-State"). And suppose further that Four of the Five Families decide together that every Family within the Room must contribute a certain amount of their wealth (monies which a Family could otherwise spend on food, housing, clothing, health care, et cetera) in order to fund a Publik Skooling system for all the Children of the Room.
The Fifth Family wants nothing to do with this Scheme, having elected instead to spend their monies on food, housing, clothing, health care, et cetera. They desire no subsidy whatsoever from the other Four Families, but only prefer to educate their Children instead within the Home or within their Church.
IF the Four Families enforce their diktat by Government Coercion, compelling the Fifth Family to contribute to their "Publik Skooling" scheme whether the Fifth Family wants to or not, then have they not committed Theft? Cloak it however you will in the language of "Democracy" and "Majority Rule"... have they not imposed their Will upon the Fifth Family, taken their monies by force, and forced their own Beliefs on those of the Fifth Family?

From this anecdote, I hope you will begin to realize that all questions of Politics must begin from a consideration of First Principles. If you don't start there, you might as well give up on any hope of Justice and Equity in Law, whatsoever.

First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?

Best, OP

The question then becomes "When is government coercion to participate in joint projects justified?"

Using your illustration of the 5 families, let us say that the valley in which the families live is facing attack from some outside band of marauder's. Let us have the 4 families who say, "We must band together." and the 5th family that says, "No, we'll do our protection on our own."

Is there anything different about defense that makes it unique in this discussion? I would argue that there is. Defense involves the families' immediate life and freedom whereas education does not immediately touch on one's ability to stay alive, and only distantly touches on one's ability to remain free.

That gets us to the 2nd consideration, that of "the superiority of combined action versus individual action." I doubt anyone would deny that 5 warriors have more firepower than one warrior -- assuming similarly armed warriors. Since the law of massed lethality has been recognized by authors on war from Sun Tzu to Tommie Franks, a law tested again and again, then it is safe to simply state for our purposes here that war is GENERALLY best and most successfully conducted when there is combined action versus individual action. (Specifically the issue is "mass" focused at a decisive point....if I can focus my 20,000 man division's combat lethality, and my fire-support from air and artillery, against your strategic weaknesses and you cannot muster the forces to repel them AT THAT DECISIVE FOCAL POINT, then I will defeat you even though your army might total many thousands more than my 20,000 man division; e.g., the recent Iraq military defeated by about 4 divisions of troops.)

In other words, I'm suggesting that combined, coerced action is "understandable" when there are issues "immediately" touching on one's life and freedom, AND there is studied and honest reason to indicate that combined action will have a MOMENTOUSLY greater return than will individual action.

That is why health care is an issue about which "compassionate conservatives" must think. Access to health care does "immediately" touch on the issue of life, because too often health care involves sicknesses and injuries that are immediately life-threatening.

The puzzling question with health care has to do with the value of combined versus individual action. There is good reason to believe from looking at nations that have gone the route of coerced, combined effort to provide health care that the resulting care is LESS EFFECTIVE than when health care is privately managed.

Simply ask any rich person in any country that practices socialized health care if they'd rather be worked on by an American surgeon in an American medical center or if they prefer their care be provided via the Canadian socialized system. The rich from around the world vote in favor of their care being via the American system. Fascinating.

I think it is the same dynamic as made the old Soviet food industry such a disaster. The government, in its wisdom, would sit down and try to decide how many acres of corn and potatoes needed to be planted for the needs of the Soviet population and the price to charge for the same. They probably did the math about the number of families, the number of potatoes and corn consumed in one meal, multiplied by a year, subtracted by deaths, etc., etc.

I'm sure they were great, mathematically supportable models they came up with....but they never worked because of the fickleness of markets, buying decisions, tastes, weather, costs of fertilizer, oil, etc.

In short, they discovered that keeping production decision centralized was counterproductive rather than advantageous. Not only did it not provide a MOMENTOUSLY greater return, it did not provide AS GOOD A RETURN as did private agricultural production.

Socialized medicine not only does not provide a MOMENTOUSLY greater return, but it also does not provide AS GOOD A RETURN as did private agricultural production.

Therefore, socialized medicine does not meet both tests, but only one of them. It does touch on an immediate life issue, but it does not provide a better medical care, and in fact, provides a worse medical care.

However, there should be compassionate conservative consideration of the fact that it does meet one of the tests. The fact that medical care touches on issues immediately touching on one's ability to remain ALIVE says that conservatives shouldn't gloss over this issue, but should consider it COMPASSIONATELY. They should not go the route of socialized medicine, which produces counterproductive results, but they should consider some intervention that enables citizens some comforting assurance that their very LIVES will be seriously regarded.

Assistance with costs is a goodhearted, well-intentioned effort to recognize the LIFE issue that is at stake. I believe it will fail, however, because it is an amount of money designed to accommodate a specific percentage of prescription cost. Since those drug costs are in a free market, and must remain free for success to continue in drug research, those costs will fluctuate UPWARD in price. To maintain the same percentage in the drug program will inevitably lead to greater and greater outlays in costs until one is forced to lower the percentage or to attempt to control prices....the latter would be a tragic result. (Witness the doctors getting out of medicine because their prices are controlled by insurance companies and government programs like Medicare/aid, AND their costs for malpractice insurance keep rising thanks rapacious jury-theft awards to the John Edwards of the world.)

Additionally, the case can also be made that any cooperative/combined/shared funding plan for medical costs creates a huge pot of money, and that pot of money encourages prices to increase to the level where that money gets spent by some player (hospital, doctor, insurance company, etc. (Sorta like "junk accumulates to fill the available space." "Prices increase to consume the available money.")

Therefore, the best plan will end up being a plan that encourages private costs and private prices. The market will force those two to find a livable middle ground.

The best work of conservatives would be work designed to think-tank where that private cost/private price juncture is, what it would look like, and how to push the system in that direction.

My own opinion is that it will end up looking like private pay for basic medical care and shared pay insurance for catastrophic medical care.

It's a distortion of the system to expect a "plan" to pay when I break my wrist and need a cast, or to pay when I have a cold and need an antibiotic. It would be like expecting the homeowner's policy to pay when my drains get clogged and I have to call a plumber. Sure, pay when the house burns down or gets burglarized/vandalized, but why should they pay just because I need to replace a fixture and pipe?

Normal care versus catastrophic care would actually be a throwback to about the 1950's, 1960's wouldn't it....when the government was less involved and much of the medical care was private pay except for catastrophic insurance coverage?