You make some great arguments, even as devil's advocate, so I feel the need to offer as much of a rebuttal as I can. linking health care to your job means that

You make some great arguments, even as devil's advocate, so I feel the need to offer as much of a rebuttal as I can. linking health care to your job means that productive citizens are being taken care of Assuming productivity is related to the selling of your time to another actor is outdated 20th century thinking. People can and are becoming increasingly productive without having "jobs" that fit a definition. Entrepreneurs, contractors, part-time workers, stay at home parents, students... all of these people are outside of the employer/employee equation and thus don't have access to health care because of it. Tell me, who's more valuable to society, employee #992232 of big corp the next Richard Branson? Tying health care to employment ensures the former, not the latter is given incentive. This is precisely what we don't want. If the US government is going to take on Health Care that money needs to come from funds already in the budget. This is a much more practical argument and it is difficult to rebut directly. Essentially though, you are correct: something else would need to be sacrificed. There is, of course, an obvious target: http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/securityspending/articles/fy09_dod_request_global/ http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/securityspending/article... In addition to that though, spending on Medicaid and Medicare within the current system is hugely inflated, from what I can see. US per capita administrative costs are triple that of Canada: http://pweb1.rwjf.org/reports/grr/036617.htm http://pweb1.rwjf.org/reports/grr/036617.htm So, even without a military cut back, the money is already being spent, just on HMO's instead of actual health care.