I'm going to keep this relatively short, but I feel obliged to butt my opinion into this one.

The problems with our current health care system come from one of two places. Some come from a lack of technology to address problems, or insufficiently developed treatments, or theories. The rest come from violent intervention into the market, in the name of government.

The health care debate as of late has been characterized by two dominating approaches. First, there is the leadership of the Democratic party, who advocate some degree of increased government control over healthcare. Second, there is the leadership of the Republican party, who either feverishly contest the approach taken by the former group and advocate its complete reversal (in the case of less representatives than you can count on your fingers), or sheepishly object to it. To override the outspoken representatives, we have the wonderful construct of the televised media, who frame the entirety of the debate as two sides, both of which are equally correct, but really hate each other. On one hand, we have Rep. Grayson, holding up his "G.O.P. shoots at babies" sign, and on the other, we have Sarah Palin alluding to "death panels." Both of these acts have received elaborate media coverage, and have completely failed to address any of the issues at hand. Off in the corner, there is the distant voice of people who advocate less and no government, of which I consider myself a part.

H.R. 3962, the "Affordable Health Care for America Act," could not be named more deceptively. The bill contains up at least 9 direct tax increases; this is at least what we can augur from its labyrinthine contents. The bill attempts to create a threshold for insurance based on income as Medicaid once did, among its countless provisions. This is not a cooperative, remember, these programs are funded by money that is violently extracted from you, and it's ridiculous to think you'd make money off of that. This whole thing is insane.

Now let me sum up the contents of the bill in terms of actual results. I will generalize quite broadly for a minute here, so bear with me.

No incursion into private industry, defined as the realm of human interaction which takes the form of purely voluntary transactions, by a violent demand, has ever resulted in a more equitable result, possibly barring truly defensive violence, or situations where there is a fundamental imbalance of information. No incursion into private industry by government has ever had a net increase on the ability of all markets to respond to consumer demand, and neither have any ever reduced the prices for a product without reducing either the quality of the product or the compensation of those who create that product. When the government has the ability to intervene into private industry and make a positive change, in the event that somebody has been cheated, originally in the intent of correcting inefficiencies in markets resulting from a person's inability to predict the actions of another to be involved in a transaction with them (in the model of a nonviolent market), it is nonetheless a fundamentally coercive mechanism, and is as susceptible to exploitation, and expansion into business cartels much like what we see today. When government is at the point where it is exploitative, a candidate who wishes to make positive changes will have the means to gain power if information is controlled. Certainly the person willing to draw a living from the violent extraction of funds is more likely to be manipulative or violent in efforts to retain power.

The implications of what I just said should be somewhat clear, but let me state it more explicitly. If "ObamaCare" was actually cheaper for people, or produced better results as a whole, and was not a huge financial black hole, it would not take the form of a mandatory program, backed by violence. Rather, it would take the form of a cooperative in the free market, composed of people who elected to be members of it. The thing about that, though, is that we've tried it already, and it doesn't really work very well - medicine is a field that requires substantial expertise, and is fundamentally ineffecient as a cooperative. Attempts to field a cooperative in terms of insurance are fundamentally unstable, because any member of a cooperative receiving less than the mean in benefits will be willing to fund another cooperative that bases premiums on risk - which will leave the higher risk people paying high premiums as they would to begin with. The fact that ObamaCare, and indeed any government program intended to socialize an industry, is mandatory is not only a reflection of the difficulty inherent in getting people to voluntarily enroll in such a program, but a reflection of the fact that the program can be distorted in the future in the name of further "reform," to create more favorable conditions for its administrators and contractees. This is the nature of government.

The only improvements that the G.O.P. politicians, or indeed those of any party, can make on to our current health care system are to either leave politics and start an organization that offers superior service to all of the existing businesses (and indeed, take all of their customers in the process), or to rescind all of the incursions that have been made into the industry to begin with. The results of this will be very significant. The American Medical Association will no longer enjoy a monopoly over the certification of doctors, which will drastically lower prices by loosening the supply in the field, the F.D.A. will no longer control the certification of medicines, which will stimulate the production of new medicines and, in the event that medical patents are rescinded, will also greatly lower the price of drug manufacture, and in turn, the prices of drugs. Furthermore, all sorts of traditional medicines will be subject to the purchasing decisions of free individuals, as opposed to a government monopoly. This necessitates, ending the "war on drugs," as the right of individuals to self-medicate is fundamentally unjust to violate. Malpractice reform (read: the lack of malpractice lawsuits) will eliminate the need for malpractice insurance, and lower the overhead doctors need to operate. The elimination of restrictions on the insurance market will greatly increase its viscosity and eliminate the coercive, bureaucratic monopolies that currently dominate it, and lower premiums as a result. This will also repair the often-complained about problem of 30 million people being uninsured in the United States - those who desire insurance will be able to afford it. This is really simple, trust me. Hopefully the internet can provide a market based on information, and teach politicians to stop acting like assholes, in the end, maybe just do something helpful for a living. Domination is only possible when you can control information.