Deuce:
You seem horribly fixed on the idea that "people are literally more likely to die without insurance than with."
That's a no-brainer and requires very little thought because common sense tells me that you're right. The other part of me says, "So what?"
Your presentation is flawed because it's fraught with emotion. Speaking for myself, I'd say it isn't the basic point you're making, it's how you're making it.
Based on your logic and your very emotional appeal (Chump has that part completely correct vis a vis your methodology of argument), I think it stands to reason the following:
"People are literally more likely to die in motor vehicle accidents when they're in said vehicles than not."
Of course people are going to die in motor vehicle accidents when they're riding in them. Doh! And there are going to be rich people and some have-nots. Most of the have-nots are going to struggle in this world. Many of the rich will too, because they're using their wits, their resources, and their entrepreneurship to find a better life for themselves and their families. This is not to suggest that the have-nots don't do that as well, but you're going to find far fewer rich people standing there with their hand out expecting Uncle Sugar to take care of them.
Your basic premise is to force the country to adopt a hand-wringing, gotta-throw-money-at-the-have-nots policy (under the cloak of "humanitarianism") of the kind of scope that will further cripple the country. If you want to see a link on that, just check out the debacle that is the Massachusetts health care system today.
As a determined conservative, I can see that we're going to have have-nots. And I further see our current system taking care of those have-nots. Do they get the same stellar health care of, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Of course not. Do some die because they're homeless and they expire while waiting in the waiting room overnight? Yep, some of that is going to happen.
Rolling back government, i.e., Medicare and Medicaid, simply won't happen. As passionate as DefiantSix is about his position on the issue, politics will see to it that those government systems stay. Some of the nuances might change and benefits reduced, but the U.S. Congress rarely met a government program it didn't like, keeping most of those long beyond their usefulness. So I think you can put your mind at rest on that issue.
Medicaid (cough) and Medicare (choke) will stay.
What did the country do for its geezers and have-nots before LBJ and his Great Society came along? That might be the larger question.
Families were tighter in those years, and neighbors more inclined to help you if you had a problem. Churches were sanctuaries in thought, word, and deed and helped people of all types. It may be a stretch, but I think the basic changes in our society as reflected in the LBJ Great Society example have resulted in a degradation of family and community that plagues us far beyond your lamenting poor people today.
Think about it. Would Mr. Jones, in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression, calmly walk around the freezing, homeless figure of Mr. Smith completely ignoring him? Mr. Jones today worries about being sued because he tried to help someone and the act blew up in his face.
Tort reform should be an absolute component of any effort to "fix" our health care system - which happens to be the finest in the world.
But you've heard that before, seems to me.
