Are you attempting to persuade me that we can't have rational arguments about politics here?
An excellent question. I don't know if "we," meaning you and I in particular, can have a rational argument based on what you say in your this response. Maybe I should try harder.
I don't know, maybe I can't do it. The evidence is not strong that I can, that's for sure :)
It seems to me that your response proposes a form of private contract which does not exist at all in real life, and that you state a preference for this theoretical solution over any of the real systems that actually do exist.
So I guess if I were rationally arguing politically with you, I would say something like this:
Perhaps in some very long run, we might find health care arrangements would move in the direction that you like, that contracts such as the ones you say you would like will be offered, and will be purchased at the offered prices. But in the meantime, we have hundreds of millions of people in the systems that do exist. Does it make sense to take existence as evidence of possibility and plausibility, and emphasize in our arguments what we might do in the near term, primarily in terms of choosing among proven possibilities, to improve the health care system in the U.S.? In any case, that is what I prefer to argue or discuss politically.
Well, let me ask a rather pointed question: Do you consider any existing successful healthcare systems undesirable?
Or, from the converse, is there any healthcare system which conflicts with your political beliefs that you regard as having been successful? Did you arrive at a healthcare system after formulating criteria by which you would judge a healthcare system acceptable, or did you formulate criteria which excluded healthcare systems you don't approve of?
(These are distinct questions; I'm not attempting to trick you with the second one.)
For your refer...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.