We can be free and insure our children; indeed, we can't be if we don't

I recently responded to an email equating life in a more progressive society with communism:

"So if you want to imagine what life will be like when the central planners and experts get complete control, just imagine being in the army for the rest of your life, with no chance to ever leave it :)"

I will try to remember that the next time I step outside, considering I live in a country now that has all the things "progressive say they want" and the contrast between Switzerland and the military could not be greater.   All the countries of Western Europe - and I have visited or lived in most of them - have universal healthcare and the idea that this leads inevitably to loss of freedom or stagnation of economic growth is beyond ludicrous.  If there is an exodus of French, Germans, or Swiss fleeing for the United States, I must have completely missed it.  No chains, no camps, no gulags.   Just healthier children and citizens and no risk of losing everything you ever worked for because you get sick between jobs.    On every parameter from infant mortality to teen pregnancy to life expectancy at birth, countries with universal healthcare do far better than we do.  Our own CIA (the same one who just killed Osama bin Laden) ranked us 49th in the world in life expectancy.   49th.

The Commonwealth Fund recently put out a survey of 7 leading countries and where do you think we ranked?  Dead last.   Although we were #1 in one category:  spending (@ $7,290 per citizen, about twice what the other surveyed countries spend).   They pay less and get more, so if you want to reduce waste, you must support healthcare reform (don't you?).   

There are many sorts of freedom and many forms of tyranny.   Europeans are free from having to save a fortune to send their kids to a private college or take them out of failing public schools or pay thousands a year for a for profit health insurance plan.   They pay more for a Big Mac though and our cell phone plans are a bit cheaper, so I guess there are some advantages to life in America.  Personally, I would rather my child did not die from a treatable illness because some gubment-hater was duped into believing that healthcare reform is a "government takeover of healthcare."  But that's just me.

You are confusing being in uniform and having each minute of your life orchestrated by a government with having to pay a nickel more in taxes each day (if that) but a thousand dollars less a month in private insurance premiums.    I think you're also confusing socialism and communism, but I  have given up trying to educate people on this (they do both end in -ism, after all, and the communists called themselves socialists; avoiding socialism because communists misused the word would be like shunning democracy because East Germany called itself "Democratic.")  

"I must be looking at the wrong government bashing websites.  The ones I look at don't say much about 'doing nothing right', but rather focus on government over-reach and over regulation, and massive, massive overspending."

Perhaps you have been out of the country for as long as I have.  Google "Tea Party" or "Koch brothers" or "John Birch Society" (a creation of David Koch's father).   Listen to the pronouncements of the freshmen class of Congress including one of our classmates.  Perhaps Reagan was stuttering when he said that government was not part of the problem, it was the problem.  

Re government over-reach and over-regulation, how does defunding Planned Parenthood, NPR, Head Start, healthcare for 9-11 first responders, or healthcare for poor children, the elderly, and disabled, fit into that scheme?  And I'm not sure increasing government intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship (when the patient is a woman) fits into your libertarian theme anymore than government telling citizens they cannot organize for better working conditions has anything to do with freedom.  

I agree the government, even under Obama, is continuing to deficit spend  (it tends to do that during wars and economic crises such as the one triggered by the deregulation of the smartest guys in the room who brought us the mortgage-backed securities and other job-crushing private initiatives) but I'm not sure I would agree that 5% of GDP is "massive, massive," especially if the deficit was created by a package of tax cuts that cost about 5% of GDP.   If the deficit is "massive, massive" then so are the tax cuts, so thanks for making the case for rolling them back to at least Clinton, if not Reagan, era levels. 

Most government spending is non-discretionary, determined decades ago by legislation, particularly the Great Society programs, and demographics.  You can't plug a 1.5T whole by ignoring 1.5T of tax cuts and defunding $30 or $60 or $90 billion from programs to the poor who did nothing to get us into this mess.   I personally do not mind paying a bit more in taxes so that someone's grandmother does not have to eat cat food or choose between groceries or medicine, or so that returning veterans will have fully-staffed clinics and no veteran will sleep under a bridge one day, but that seems a minority opinion in some circles.  

Let's just all thank the gods that this strike on Osama bin Laden was not outsourced to a private firm but left to professionals whose primary motivation is service to others, not service to self.