And sooner or later, you will need it. We are all just temporarily healthy.

“But the government shouldn’t force me to…” Shut up. There’s a word for people who don’t want health coverage. That word is “irresponsible.” When you get sick, you’ll be more than glad for the taxpayer to pick up the price of your care, won’t you? Or maybe you’ll just die with dignity at home, secure in your principles. There’s a word for that, too. The word is “idiot.”

You don’t get this because you think like college freshmen. You think there’s One Big Answer out there that will solve all the puzzles and complexities of life. You shove everything through an ideological filter. You think you’ve found “The Big Answer,” THE FREE MARKET! Liberty means being absolutely free in your economic choices.

There are a lot of reasons why this is wrong. You shouldn’t be free (as you once were) to sell adulterated bread, milk or meat, cars that explode, phony medicine or the like. But the big reason is simpler. It’s not an economic question. It’s a moral one. When people need help, we, as a society should help them.

Everyone needs health care. Everyone should get it. It is demonstrably NOT better to limp along in a hybrid system designed to appeal to people with lobbyists who get rich off other people’s brain tumors. Any system designed to do anything but get the best possible care to the largest possible number of people is a moral failure. We have an obligation to do what we can to improve each other’s lives. That’s what living in a “society” means. Not letting them die because they weren’t efficient enough predators in Von Mieses Circus of Selfish Bullshit would seem like a good baseline.