Access to adequate medical care is a moral issue. If we can provide it, we should do it, even when (and maybe because) it hurts. When my children are sick, I care for them. When my parents are sick, I care for them. Not because it is in my economic self-interest to do so (although eco-pundits will find ways to quantify this on a macrosocial level, I’m sure). I do it because it is the moral thing to do. Money is not the irreducible currency of life. Much fuzzier things like “quality,” “satisfaction,” “fulfillment,” and “membership” are. Our satisfaction as human beings derives mostly from our emotions, and these are tickled only tangentially by matters of the wallet, but far more by the gratification of belonging to a well-functioning society.

I wish we would all stop pretending that the money really matters. It is making us stray from the very things that make us human, happy, and wise. Our society has become sick with willful self-deception. It’s time to alter course.

Do you also advocate the existence of nation states?

And if so, what morally - or even efficiently should that state extract from its citizens in tax dollars, and for what?

The immorality argument is the weakest of all arguments against single payer. You can do better, and have. But you’re getting to the bottom of the barrell.

Perhaps it’s time for you to start proposing concrete alternatives rather than simply playing the critic 24/7.

Of course you are. You’re forcing people into a risk pool that they may not want to participate in. Laws requiring people to buy insurance are the direct result of the very insurance lobby that “progressives” are always complaining about.

Do you argue all taxes are “immoral” even though they may go for a road you utilize?

To forcibly take money from one person and give it to another (whose need for it is no greater) is robbery. You can dress it up with euphemisms all day long, but it is larceny nonetheless.

Thank you for confirming my theory on “progressive” motivation (and delusions of grandeur).

Just to pick you up on ‘hoi polloi’ - it means the masses, who of course have most to gain from universal healthcare. Quite rightly, those who argue for it are indeed morally superior to the health insurers and hangers on who are desperate to carry on picking as many pockets as they can.