Don't be silly, Jack. My proposition--as you well know--is no more "straight and unqualified" than is your suggesting that universal health care always has positive outcomes. Interesting that I've yet to see you mention the country that had universal health care (and universal everything else, under govt control) before any other in all your comparisons. Just how did UHC work out in the old Soviet Union anyhow? If you cherry-pick countries--as was done in the article you referenced on gun laws and murder rates--you can certainly find some with stricter gun laws than the US but higher murder rates. Likewise, I don't believe the Soviet Union ever surpassed the United States in life expectancy, even though they had UHC for a very long time. But I'll grant you that their health care was cheaper! Thus, in neither case is the "general proposition" universally true--but you can use statistics to prove it true most of the time.

Which is why I've tried to lead us to a discussion of SPECIFICS, not general propositions. And which leads me to point out that one has to look at social, economic, and cultural factors (reference the article you posted above, Jack) relative to the SPECIFIC country in question before one buys into a "general proposition" and how it may or may not apply.

Last edited by L. Brown; 02/28/08 09:57 AM.