Free healthcare is neither free nor often care

So early today, I get an email from a friend asking how to respond to a family member's email requesting support for free universal health care.

the email

 "Hi,
I sent the following short note to my US Congressman and both US Senators from [state of confusion].  I urge you to do the same.  Maybe we can get some action going. 

"Congressman [Leghorn Foghorn],
We need free and universal National health care.  It should be modeled after the plans that Britain and France use. "

And my reply went something like this:

Wow, it's always tough when a member of our own family is off the reservation and munching in - or mooching off - the neighbors garden.   And absent the fact that your kinsman probably hasn't spent much time receiving what passes for healthcare from our friends 'across the pond', I'll proffer this:

Free healthcare is neither free nor often care.

1. It's not free - somebody must pay
2. frequently  it's not even health care, rather it's a purgatorial place where people WAIT for the promise of care and to:
1. get better naturally
2. or die

If your kinsman had a faith based world view he might remember that both the Old and New Testaments suggest ways to handle the less fortunate and they are in this order:

1. Familiar Duty
2. Church Oversight
3. Personal Charity

No where, does it state in either the Old or New Testament that guv'ment or even César is empowered force compulsory charity on us for our neighbor or on our neighbor for us!  And, in fact in the New Testament, it plainly states 'that he who does not work should not eat'.

Absent a world view that includes faith, then your options are only 1 or 3 above.  

Unless of course, you believe that society owns you rather than you own you!

If you believe that society owns you, then it also owns your neighbor and therefore you both can be compelled to give up that which is yours for the greater good. On the other hand if you believe that you own yourself then it is amoral for society to indenture you for your neighbors benefit.

Ask your kinsman if he is moral man or an amoral man. For a man with morals he should be able to follow the tread above and see that it is not the guv'ments  charge nor it's original intent to provide FREE universal healthcare for one at the expense of another.

 If his an amoral man he should be frog marched into the public square to proclaim his intellectual and ethical infirmity to which he will no doubt be greeted as 'fellow traveler' by the dumb masses also demanding Universal Healthcare paid for by someone else!