Thomas Paine was not on the left of the political spectrum, he was on a totally different spectrum, one where liberty is on one side and authoritarianism is on the other. The modern day liberals and conservatives BOTH embrace the power of the state. Thomas Paine would be just as disgusted to be on the left as on the right. You think it is disgusting that conservatives co-opt Paine? Well, we anarchists are equally disturbed when leftists who love gigantic governments do the same thing.

I do not deny for one second that there is a problem with healthcare financing in this country.

But the truth is that even if 67% of bankruptcies are medical related, (I will accept your figure for argument's sake) the vast majority of people in the middle class will never file for bankruptcy and are much better off with a private insurer for a very simple reason:

Government run healthcare systems provide less care than private insurance.

If we are locked in to national health insurance by law, we will lose that option, and in doing so, will lose some of our freedom.

By the way, I am a middle class middle-aged female who has opted out of all but catastrophic medical insurance. I bargain with doctors for the price of office visits, and buy generic medicines whenever possible. I have coverage in case I end up with a catastrophic illness, but I depend on my own income (which puts me right in the middle of the class)for office visits and medicine. People don't seem to realize that 3rd party payments systems actually increase the cost of healthcare and the more of it you can pay out of your own pocket, the better off you are.

This doesn't answer for those who have no money to pay for healthcare, but going to the opposite extreme of national health insurance doesn't either. It merely creates a whole new and larger set of problems, and that is what conservatives are reacting to.

So many people want to just say they are racist or invoke other ad hominem arguments, but I say lets argue this issue on its merits and the fears that conservatives have about government encroachment in healthcare is legitimate, I think.

If you read my post carefully, you will notice that I did not say that Canada had abandoned their national insurance. What I said was that where they had once completely outlawed private medical clinics, they have one again legalized them because having a purely public option does not work. People wanted more options than were allowed under the national insurance system.

When you have a private insurance policy and you are dissatisfied, you can shop around and find one you like better. Such an option is not open to you under a single payer system.

What conservatives fear is the slippery slope. They fear that what begins as a mixed system will become a single payer system and they have a point. To deny they have a point is to deny the historical nature of how governments operate.

I fear what sort of program we will end up with when people are not even willing to drop their ideological blinders (both liberals and conservatives) long enough to ponder the consequences of what they are supporting.

I am NOT a conservative, and I oppose the current healthcare models circulating in Washington. While it might be true that conservatives are being dishonest about what is in the bills, they have a point. History teaches us that what governments tell us is only voluntary today often becomes mandatory tomorrow.

And I, for one, have no desire to become subject to an army of bureacratic gatekeepers in control of our healthcare. Obama is on record saying that he favors a single payer system. Every singlepayer system in the world has instituted rationing, and not the sort of rationing we think of in an environment of private insurers, but the sort where government agencies decide that certain illnesses are not worth spending a dime on.

There is a reason that after years, Canada has once again allowed private medical clinics. The purely public option doesn't work. Thinking people, no matter what their ideological mindset, have a reason to be highly skeptical of what we are going to end up with.

Good healthcare is expensive, and countries with single payer systems don't save money by providing better healthcare at a lower cost. They save money by rationing health services.

Is that really what we want? I know it isn't what I want.