Argument wanted: Universal Health Care

Can anyone provide an argument against universal health care which isn't rooted in selfishness?

Across the United States today, there are diabetics skimping on their insulin, child asthmatics struggling to breathe, and cancer victims dying from undetected tumors. Studies by the Institute of Medicine suggest that thousands of people, maybe even tens of thousands, die prematurely every year because they don't have health insurance. And even those who don't suffer medical consequences face financial and emotional pain, as when seniors choose between prescriptions and groceries--or when families choose between the mortgage and hospital bills.These are not the sorts of hardships that an enlightened society tolerates, particularly when those hardships so frequently visit people who, as the politicians like to say, "work hard and play by the rules."

But most of my friends and my readers, too, I suspect, are willing to put up with these hardships. Why? Because their job gives them private health insurance, and protection from pain; therefore the consequences of having no health coverage are, for the most part, somebody else's concern. Why change, if change means something worse? (1)

Of course, no one is ever that honest. Instead, of putting their arguments in such stark terms, they'll make a lot of noise about efficiencies. Longer lines(2). Fewer MRI machines.(3). Less motivated doctors.(4) That sort of thing. But it's all the same morally bankrupt argument. Saying that we can't have universal health care because it might mean longer waits for CT scanners is like saying that some people should starve to death, so that I can continue to enjoy the convinience of a local grocery with short lines. At bottom, that's selfishness, and nothing more.

So I am looking for a better argument. If you can provide a fact-based argument against universal health care, one that doesn't smack of selfishness, I'd like to hear it.

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(1) In this case, change doesn't mean somethng worse. Studies show that citizens in universal health care systems are healthier, live longer, and enjoy more doctor visits and more hospital days than in the US. My point though, is that even if it does mean something worse, universal health care is still a moral imperative.

(2) There would be no lines under a universal health care system in the United States because we have about a 30% oversupply of medical equipment and surgeons

(3) The citizens of Japan have universal health care and more CT scanners and MRI machines than we do

(4) The fear is the universal health care turns doctors into government burocrats, but this is false: Single payer universal health care is not socialized medicine. It is health care payment system, not a health care delivery system. Health care providers would be in fee for service practice, and would not be employees of the government, which would be socialized medicine. Single payer health care is not socialized medicine, any more than the public funding of education is socialized education, or the public funding of the defense industry is socialized defense.

[Source: The well-written bits of this were lifted whole from here and here; the balance is mine.]