making the point better than I

The Audacity of Option
Kevin Maley
The United States stands alone among advanced nations that do not guarantee basic health care for its citizens. We spend half a trillion dollars a year on our military, and accept this on the premise that the government should protect the lives of its citizens. In most other countries, this logic extends to health care; every citizen has basic health insurance, paid for by the government. Everyone is insured. But in the United States, over 47 million Americans are not insured, mainly because we live in a system where you have insurance if you can afford it; if not, you are screwed. We are a country, to paraphrase Senator Kennedy, where the state of an individual's health depends on the size of a individual's wealth.