What does that have to do with altruism?

Peter's belief that Paul ought to pay for Paddy's healthcare is not altruism.

An altruist wouldn't need a public healthcare system. A public healthcare system is only needed when non-altruists want a healthcare system.

Altruists would pay for the system. Non-altruists with the same goal would try to find a way to get others to pay for it.

That's likely and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

That seems likely.

That's pro and con. Both sides have allies who have to gain and to lose.

I find this more of an argument for the pro side: Why should I have to pay for my healthcare when you can do it?

The actual argument is that government shouldn't do healthcare because that's simply not what government's job is.

That's a good argument for pro and con (and any other system that advocates saving American lives for a lot of money rather than saving more African lives for less money).

That's how I understood it.

I am just thinking that "altruism" is a weird motive for demanding that others pay for one's healthcare.

To me "altruism" is the opposite of that. If I were an altruist, I would demand that I pay for others, not the other way around.

In the end all americans would pay for everyone's health care.

Willing to sacrifice a part of your income to ensure that every fellow citizen gets insurance may not be altruism but it's the opposite of a selfish "Why should I pay for your health care?" attitude.

By altruism as motive I mean that the pro faction sees it as a selfless act, a desire to do what is right, untainted by hidden nefarious agendas.

So you are just saying that one pro motive is the personal inability (due to preexisting conditions or lack of money) to afford health care? Sounds convincing. I'll put that in the list as desperation.

You can call it "desperation" or "spending money on other things".

It's a reason.

Whether you want to give it a positive or negative spin depends on what you want the result of the list to be like.

Many people's "personal inability to afford healthcare" is due to the "preexisting condition" of having spent money on something else. If you find an American who owns a car and a big-screen TV but doesn't have health insurance, you likely found an idiot. But there seem to be quite many of those.

Again, not what this system is trying to solve.

Uncoupling health insurance from employment could be done quite effectively without making the entire system public.

That's a very good point.

A public healthcare system will lower costs, but not by addressing the two points you brought up. It will just lower prices because the state has monopsony power.

However, the basis for the lower price will be worse quality when good doctors will leave the US for other markets and/or be less willing to work very hard for less pay than they could otherwise get on a free market.

Is that fair? Maybe not, I mean at least the Irish went through immigration, but they went through a much, much, much easier immigration process and with our rising latino population it's probably not someone like you who's going to be writing the text books. In the end those people's children are legitimate citizens and they'll remember their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents as family, not interlopers or leeches and you'll be remembered as part of a xenophobic crowd that couldn't stop the inevitable.

What's your solution anyway? Do you want to sweep through the country hunting down illegals and splitting up families? That's ballot office poison and it won't happen on a large enough scale to really make a dent in health care costs. Would you rather illegal aliens just no longer be accepted into emergency rooms? Try winning an election on that platform once the first wave of preventable deaths occurs.

A law that's on the books that isn't enforced weakens the strength of all laws, but it's not so black and white and illegal aliens aren't a realistic scapegoat here. The last figure I saw was that they're costing about 11 billion dollars annually. That's a lot of waste that needs to be addressed, but it's not easy to do and it's not a large percentage of our total health care costs.

I probably should clarify something regarding my above post. I was simpy stating facts regarding the costs of illegal aliens use of our health care system. I NO WAY am I suggesting that they themselves are bad or evil. In fact, I just happen to be a musician is a latin band whose members are predominantly Latino and have relatives who are here illegally. My group actually advocates for Latino's quite often at our shows. 

I'm just trying to point out the hypocrisy of our government and hopefully enlighten people to the idea that if we do not educate ourselves to the truth behind the issues that our government claims to want to "fix", and is greedily ready to take our hard earned money in the process in order to empower themselves, we are doomed to be abused by our very same "leaders".  

As for fixes there has been discussion on Tort reform for decades now. The problem is that advocates for lawyers have a TON of money and political influence. Our elected "leaders" never seem to have the guts to take on these groups when it means these groups could mobilize and threaten the politicians re-election which, make no mistake, is the number one goal of all these creeps.

Regarding illegal immigration it seems to me we have a couple choices: 1) Help improve the economies of the Latin American countries so their people will not have a need to come here for a better way of life, 2) Impose harsh penalties on companies that hire illegals. This would probably require fingerprinting with each hire (a very difficult political stance). 

Thank you so much for hijacking the thread.

But we are kinda back discussing cost again.

So, are we germans paying too much?

How much do citizens in other countries pay ... and what's the leftover money worth?

@Primal Zed

But isn't that an unchristian philsophy?

Many americans and much more republicans seem to share your life philosophy while at the same time calling themselves devoted christians.

Isn't that a contradiction?