Peter, you knowledge of both American politics and the American health care system leave a lot to be desired. I can’t say much about your theological and metaphysical acumen, either.

“However, recently (over the last 30 years or so), there has been far too much hot air about the ‘rights of individuals’ without much, if any, consideration of the responsibilities of those same individuals.”

You’ll have a hell of a time finding a conservative who disagrees with that. It’s the left that seems to attribute every form of misbehavior to racism or poverty or some other form of social determinism.

“A perfect example: the payment of tax.”

Your whole take on that is simplistic to say the least. Of course government takes some tax income to perform its function. Again, you’ll have a hell of a time finding anyone sane who disagrees with that. The question is what exactly is or should be government’s function? Surely even you would admit there’s room for debate on that? Also, as a person of the left you might want to believe that the wealth from which taxes come somehow magically appears and is mysteriously inexhaustable, but the fact is that there is a point at which taxation produces diminishing returns, a point at which the government kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. Exactly where that point is, is a matter of debate. That there is such a point is not.

“At what precise stage in the development of the fetus does it become a child?”

Ok, I’ll turn that around on you. What is the magic moment at which the fetus becomes a “person?” At birth? While it’s in the birth canal? Two minutes before that? It’s always seemed to me that it’s the pro-abortion folks who have the religious belief. What’s more logical, to assert that a “clump of cells” at some precise moment mysteriously becomes a “person” or that the “clump of cells” is always already a person? The fetus is simply at an early stage of development and is no less a person than an infant, a child, an adolescent, or an adult. Fetus is a stage of development of something that is from the start a human person. If you don’t agree, then I would like to know precisely at what magic moment something lifeless becomes human. I would also like to know how in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, or embryo implantation is possible if the “clump of cells” doesn’t have an independent life of its own. That seems to me a clear and uncontroversial demonstration of the independent life of the fetus.

It also creates the possibility that an expansion of governmental control will produce good, happy results by keeping those private-insurance leeches in check. Why, in the United States, is the equivalence made between ‘evil’ and ‘government’? Stuart Koehl expresses this perfectly – ‘In a representative democracy, this means evil can be overcome only by convincing a majority of the people to vote against evil.’

‘One reader draws attention to the possibilities of euthanasia as a cost-saving mechanism.’

No, actually it is far more likely that a fully privatised health system will produce countless more deaths through lack of care, cost-cutting, excessive medical bills, insurance companies trying to deny coverage to those with minor genetic defects, and on, and on, and on. After all, private companies exist for one purpose ONLY – to make money. No other reason. They are not charities, they don’t actually care about anyone, except to the extent that they can fleece poor sods of their hard-earned cash.
This absurd comment alone proves that you don’t know what you are talking about.

‘All good points…’
You can’t be serious. Reading this, I get the feeling that I am actually reading a Tea Party health manifesto.

Yes, we have laws to regulate the conduct of behaviour that could be, or would be, harmful to others, which is a good thing. However, recently (over the last 30 years or so), there has been far too much hot air about the ‘rights of individuals’ without much, if any, consideration of the responsibilities of those same individuals.
A perfect example: the payment of tax. One of the things that arch-conservatives and their lackeys seem to all have in common is the notion that, no matter how low their tax rate actually is, it is still too much. Do these people willfully ignore the fact that these taxes they pay, and that they incessantly complain about, actually go toward keeping the country they claim to love so much on it’s feet? Do they also realise that without tax dollars, their beloved military-industrial complex would become extinct? Do they actually realise that tax cuts for the wealthy are not only inherently immoral, but actually make the current financial situation far worse than it would otherwise be?

‘The only question is what are those constraints; where are the limitations. Unborn children are demonstrably human beings with lives separate from thier mothers’. The mother’s right to “live as she sees fit” does not include the right to murder an innocent human being any more than my right to “live as I see fit” includes the right to murder you.’ – Fred

The point you make that ‘unborn children are demonstrably human beings’ is controversial at best. At what precise stage in the development of the fetus does it become a child? I’m asking because this, one would think simple, point has never been clearly elucidated by either the anti-abortionists (apart from the Catholics, who seem to believe that a single cell is actually a person), nor the free-choice crowd. At what point does the fetus acquire a, for lack of a better word, a ‘soul’?

By the way, that’s not a fallacy. Sometimes there really is only a choice between two options.

‘Defense spending amounts to roughly $600 billion, or 18% of all Federal outlays (4.7% of GDP). A 10% cut in defense appropriations would only give you $60 billion, which isn’t enough to fund Obamacare for a couple of months.

Try to crunch the numbers before spouting off.’
- Stuart Koehl

These figures of yours may or may not be accurate (the source for this information was…?), but my intent, which maybe I should have made clearer, was that there is a great deal of wasteful expenditure that could be curbed. Whether ten percent is ‘only’ equal to 60 billion dollars is beside the point that I was trying to make, this point being that the priorities of most governments and private corporations are often wrong and/or misguided. If 10 percent is such a trifling amount in your view, then let’s make it 90 percent!

‘The very concept of “privacy” and “private life” is a relatively recent concept–and not one who invokes biblical arguments against capitalism should indulge, since in the time of Christ and the Apostles, privacy was really non-existant.

People lived their lives in public spaces, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. These were communitarian societies…’ – Stuart K.

I invoked the ‘biblical arguments’ simply because there are so many self-proclaimed Christians who whine about ‘Big Government’, ‘high taxes’ (any amount of tax is too high for these people), the ‘free market’ (i.e. capitalist exploitation of the poor), and so on, ad infinitum. I am not actually a Christian myself, or at least I don’t think of myself as such. I was simply pointing out that one cannot be both a Christian and a supporter of the current exploitative economic regime.

As for the comment that privacy is a relatively recent concept, that actually depends on, firstly, your definition of that term, and secondly the type of society that one has under consideration. It is always dangerous to make generalisations about how things used to be in the past, if only because we moderns tend to distort our perceptions about the past by colouring it with our own beliefs about how things should have been, and judging these societies through the prism of our own moral and ethical values. Ex. slavery wasn’t always considered to be ‘wrong’ in the manner we believe it to be today (don’t interpret this comment as an endorsement of slavery by me, by the way).

That’s an either/or fallacy. No one (at least no one sane) has ever believed that individuals have some absolute right to live as they see fit. That’s why we have laws. Except perhaps for some on the libertarian or anarchist fringe, everyone agrees that any individual’s right to “live as they see fit” is, and must be, constrained by other individuals’ rights and by the common good. The only question is what are those constraints; where are the limitations. Unborn children are demonstrably human beings with lives separate from thier mothers’. The mother’s right to “live as she sees fit” does not include the right to murder an innocent human being any more than my right to “live as I see fit” includes the right to murder you.

The very concept of “privacy” and “private life” is a relatively recent concept–and not one who invokes biblical arguments against capitalism should indulge, since in the time of Christ and the Apostles, privacy was really non-existant.

People lived their lives in public spaces, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. These were communitarian societies, in which the notion of the individual was largely subordinated to that of the larger group–first the extended family, then the village, then the tribe, and finally, the polis. In the absence of effective law enforcement, order and cohesion were maintained through social sanctions, as is still the case in large swaths of the Middle East today, to say nothing of small town and rural America.

Such as? Name one. Free-market fundamentalism isn’t compatible with Christianity. It says so in Acts. The four Gospels. James too. And Psalms. I could go on.
Neither is the concept of representative government. Read Romans 13:1 – 7 if you don’t believe me. It basically says that you must bow to God’s representative on Earth (in your country B. Obama), and pay your taxes.

‘On the contrary, the pro-abortion crowd are the one’s in favor of limited government, as in limiting the government’s ability to have any say in what pregnant women do or don’t decide to do.’ and

‘…our legislatures will no longer be limited by the spurious interpretation of the right to privacy…’

So this is a spurious interpretation of the rights of individuals (in this case women) to keep the government at bay when it comes to making such a personal decision. You can’t have it both ways; either you believe in the inherent rights of individuals to live as they see fit, or you don’t. You can’t seem to make up your mind.
You seem to think that the interpretation that has been given to the concept of privacy is faulty in this particular case, but I don’t agree. I, personally, happen to agree with the second of the three quotes above, if only because the logic is sounder. If you are the type of person who doesn’t believe in government interference when it comes to making your own personal choices, it doesn’t make any sense to say, ‘oh, the government should not meddle with our lives, but regarding this, this and these issues, they can if they want to.’
When privacy is gone, all talk about ‘freedom’ becomes meaningless.

Defense spending amounts to roughly $600 billion, or 18% of all Federal outlays (4.7% of GDP). A 10% cut in defense appropriations would only give you $60 billion, which isn’t enough to fund Obamacare for a couple of months.

Try to crunch the numbers before spouting off.

Yes, you can. Just reduce ‘defense spending’ by about 10 percent, and stop invading foreign countries, and you will be able to easily afford it.
Where I live (Australia) everyone is automatically covered by Medicare, and yet no-one, not even the reactionary free-market opposition party, would consider scrapping it; it is far too important.
Only in America do you ask ‘Are you insured?’ when a dying patient (yes, patient, not ‘client’)is brought to a hospital. If a small and relatively poor nation like Australia can easily affort universal care, why not the U.S?