> A person ought not face financial ruin.

The logical consequence of this is that any cost must be paid. And if the person cant pay it someone else does. So if someone gets a rare cancer whose treatment has 1% effectiveness and costs millions, it should be paid by someone else.

The principle is wishful thinking, not economics. We as people every day make trades of our life for money. We pick a means of transportation riskier than other to save some money, we choose to use a bike to be physically healthier in the long run but expose to short term risks. We eat those cheese french friends with a beer, or smoke. Etc etc.

We are no strangers to paying our pleasures with our life.

- It is the tendency of all men to magnify their own services and to disparage services rendered them, and private matters would be poorly regulated if there was not some standard of value. This guarantee we have not (or we hardly have it), in public affairs.

Americans often believe that universal healthcare is this pristine ideal that will solve everything, but thats because you haven't analyzed the consequences of it and its real life consequences.

The problem of healthcare in the us is not public-vs-private, its the extreme regulatory environment.

Your first paragraph is false and indeed can not be true in any system that rations care. All health care systems ration care since no soceity has enough resources to cover and pay for all possible needed health services. Here resources includes number of qualified workers.

If its rationed then some people are going to be left out, and the moral argument crumbles, as people that need it don't get it.

The rationing can be in a moral way or in an immoral way. All systems ration care. Most do so in a much more morally palatable way than the U.S.

I think you have half a point. A lot of people favoring universal care say things like "health care is a right". I would much prefer the statement that "basic health care is a right". We don't want to talk ourselves into a system where we feel obliged to try to cover absolutely everything.

They don't face financial ruin, unless they don't have health insurance and or they opt for various drugs that aren't covered by their plan. Before everyone screams that all things should be covered please consider that due diligence has actually been done and the drug was considered to either not be effective or not needed based upon other existing treatments.

I am fighting my insurance company right now on a charge that I didn't have health insurance when I used their services this January despite having enrolled last September.

The idea that once you have insurance the problems just magically go away is wishful thinking. These companies are predatory and stupid, and if I hadn't taken the time to read every single line for the 4-page, 10-pt font bill they sent me I wouldn't have even known they were charging me as though I was uninsured.

The idea of universal care is that everyone have insurance. Before Obamacare my sister got cancer. She wasn’t lucky enough to have an employer nice enough to provide insurance through her job. Even people with insurance often times face financial ruin. Especially before Obamacare was enacted.

> They don't face financial ruin, unless they don't have health insurance

In the age of high deductible plans I'm not sure this is accurate. For many Americans the $5,000+ for a deductible each year is unsustainable, especially if someone on the plan has an ongoing issue or they have to meet the deductible multiple times (changing jobs or an issue than spans calendar years).

>They don't face financial ruin, unless they don't have health insurance

Without the ACA, this wasn't possible for millions of people. With the ACA it was still too expensive for millions of people. With the ACA minus the individual mandate it will be too expensive for even more.

Also before the ACA, health care plans came with yearly and lifetime coverage limits. Coverage limits that were far below what care would cost in many cases. So even with insurance you could still face financial ruin.

Wrong--it is certainly the case that many insured individuals are left insolvent after necessary but costly medical procedures.