I dislike discussing this in terms of freedom, because I feel that it misses the severity of the situation. After all, how free one is when they're dead due to lack of healthcare? The CDC estimates that 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of healthcare [0](from 2012).

People are not going to the doctor when they have something treatable and preventable, because they're not covered. They'll go to the ER when whatever they have progresses far enough, and the associated monetary costs and risks to that persons life will be of course be higher because they let the problem persist.

I also take issue with the idea that this would cost more than the current system does. We spend almost twice as much per capita than other industrialized nations with universal healthcare do.[1] There are cost savings involved when you get rid of the middlemen and redundancy that comes along with our current for profit system.

The number I keep seeing in the media is that, for example, Sanders healthcare plan would cost 32 trillion dollars over a ten year period. Yet we're currently paying 34 trillion dollars.[2]

[0]https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin...

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/13/the-r...

[2]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sander...

But nothing you say is connected to whether someone should value this higher than freedoms that would be reduced. You’re making tacit normative assumptions and then refusing to engage with people who sincerely know the same facts you know and don’t attach the same meaning to them.

What? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying exactly, so please correct me if I'm making misinterpreting you here.

There are going to be people who are worse off with universal health care due to higher taxes, there is no doubt about that. The question is how much worse off will they be versus how much benefit will the average person gain as a result? How many losers will we have and how many winners, and by how much will the losers be hurt / the winners gain?

Like I've already mentioned, the costs that I've seen in the media are 32 trillion for universal healthcare, versus the 34 trillion we're paying now. So already the universal health care system is saving money and thus increasing "freedoms."

There will of course be people who have a higher burden than they used to, though. The idea is that this burden would be put on the wealthiest among us, who have, by the way, seen their share of wealth grow over the past 30 years while the wealth of the bottom 90 percent has fallen. Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.[0]

Given such facts, I for one am comfortable with the idea that we sacrifice some of the "freedom" of these individuals in order to increase the "freedoms" of everyone else. By the way, even under such a tax system, the freest among us will still remain the most free.

This is all ignoring the fact that the current status quo is needlessly killing tens of thousands of people per year, which you neglected to address in favor of talking about some abstract decrease in freedom for people due to a decrease in income for people who are already extremely well off / the most free.

Am I massively misunderstanding you here?

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-r...

Yes, you are misunderstanding me. Some people might attach a subjective value to the freedom to do what they please with their money. To them, this might be a higher idealized state of being than a state of being where people are less free with money but more free from worry about whether the next medical crisis will ruin them.

This is not about any analysis of taxes or numbers of people who will die from lack of care: it’s a normative value. Sort of like saying “murder is wrong” ... okay, but why?

Some people just sincerely believe that it’s better, from a moralistic standpoint, that your personal property and money are unrestricted. To them that is a high ideal state of humanity flourishing, because they look at the fact of the number of people who die from lack of care and they think, our freedom is well worth that unfortunate cost, and the world where we give up freedom (so they would say) to reduce the number of people who die from lack of care is a worse world (in their way of assigning value to states of being).

You’re coming at it from a point of view where you seem to think the facts you cite “speak for themselves.” But there’s no such thing because many people are well aware of the exact facts you mention and yet think that universal healthcare represents a reduction of personal property freedoms that is morally wrong to such a degree that it’s worse than enduring the social costs that come with an absence of universal care.

I get what you’re saying. But I don’t think such a philosophical approach will move the discussion forward. I don’t think many value one belief (freedom to spend) absolutely over the other (freedom from financial ruin). Most are willing to compromise and can be swayed by appealing to other things they might value, like saving lives.

That’s a more reasonable feeling, though I think the polls of popular opinion on taxes, healthcare and guns undermine your argument. I think it really does boil down to fierce defense of raw philosophical ideals for most people. People, at least in America, are not swayed by compromises on saving lives and lay down deep hooks into value systems based on ideals and then believe the defense of those ideals may rightfully entail loss of life and it can be acceptable.

I actually think the left’s dismissiveness of this way of life, spurning sincere engagement on moralistic ideals to try to use government to push compromises on people, is what fails to move the discussion forward, even though I personally subscribe to most of those pragmatic social welfare approaches.