Compassion is no basis for government.   Why shouldn't the government buy toys for all the poor kids?  Isn't that compassionate?  Why not outlaw lying to grandma?  Compassion there?  You compassion test for government action is ridiculous.

Further, you seem to imply that denying illegal immigrants government-sponsored healthcare is to deny them a right.  First, government-sponsored healthcare is not a right.  Second, then why deny them the right to vote or hold office?  That's probably ok.  After all, we acquired those rights "by mistake" and why deny them such rights? 

Let's just let everyone come over here - totally open borders, no control.  Half the globe would probably come.  Then we would have a crowding issue, and since most would be poor by American standards, we'd have to include them in our wealth transfer programs.  So why not just save them the trouble of coming here and just send all our wealth to foreign nations today and grant all citizens of foreign nations the right to vote?

Now this is all ridiculous and I'm sure you don't advocate the above, but it shows the importance of drawing a line somewhere and if that line is not at illegal immigrants, then I'm not sure where you draw it.  Would you change your position at 30 million illegal immigrants?  100 million?  500 million?

Now, as to your basic morality comment - do you mean to suggest that we should use morality as a basis of governmental action?  Because I'm sure that you don't mean that we should impose gay marriage restrictions on society since that might comport with "basic morality".

You also object to the post office comparison

Sait,

I admire your commitment to providing health care to all. I wish it would correspond to some compassion for those who disagree with you, and a commitment to providing the same constructive and specific arguments you demand from others. Since you responded to a comment I left over a month ago, and since Frannie Boyle and I were both speaking to the same topics, I thought I would respond here instead.

We can all agree that employer-based health care does not work. You asked both Frannie and myself for alternative solutions. Let's discuss some.

We should return to taxing the employer for health insurance and returning that money to the individual. Let's start by breaking down the in-state barriers to medical insurance and create national competition. From there, there are ways we could create selective coverage, and model insurance after auto insurance (i.e. the consumer pays for the areas that they select). Like Charles Krauthammer argued last month, let's socialize the risk instead of the care, meaning: why not create pools of tax payer money for malpractice suits, instead of instituting a single-payer system. Last month he wrote:

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

What to do? Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

What you could end up under a single-payer system (which looks to be dead at the moment after the recent Senate vote) is a health care mandate, meaning the government would FORCE people to buy health care insurance. That's expensive, and when you start insuring those not insured (like those in their 20s who constitute a fairly large portion of the uninsured), it does not do much to lower costs. Megan McArdle recently recounted this in the example of Massachussetts:

Before Massachusetts, there was a fair amount of hope that by introducing the healthy youngsters currently foregoing insurance into the pool, the average cost of treatment would actually fall.   Massachusetts has fairly conclusively disproved that theory; health insurance premiums in the individual market are going to rise 10% this year, according to the Boston Globe.

The practical consequences of a single-payer system suggest such significant costs. How can we incur them? Why not find new ways to open the market up. There are other complications. While this is hardly the most critical issue at hand, your 47 million number of uninsured Americans includes illegal immigrants. When President Obama addressed a joint-session of Congress last month, he notably lowered that particular statistic to 30 million, cutting it by almost a third. I do not mean this rhetorically, but: Should American citizens be required to pay for the medical care of non-citizens?

When Frannie says that we're not that different, I believe she means we simply hold different priorities. At the core, this is a difference of priority that manifests itself in the ultimate question: Is health care a right or a service? In an ideal world, every person would receive excellent medical care. Unfortunately, government fiat-rationing tends to cause a decline in quality and longer waiting periods (an entirely different discussion). We can either have excellent care for less people, or declining care for all. By introducing more free market solutions into the health care industry (modelling care more after car insurance) with some socializing controls (tort reform), we can hopefully reduce costs while preserving quality. Imagining a world where the same bureacracy that adminsiters the U.S. Post Office, the DMV and Medicare manages my personal health care terrifies me. That is, for better or for worse, my selfish prerogative.

KMM