So Dan Bongino had Cenk Uygur on his podcast for what was a friendly debate. One thing I believe Cenk had an upper hand on was the state of US Healthcare.
Those who have followed the blog long term knows that I have been in favor of single payer "universal" healthcare. Cenk made many of the arguments I have made. For example, The extremely high costs of healthcare that is driven by high levels of price gouging. For example, go to the hospital and see how much they bill you for things. You would be shocked.
Another item Cenk pointed out was how people are locked into plans provided by their employers and therefore can be "stuck" in a job situation due to needing this coverage. I myself had to face this issue when I declined to be a medical experiment.
Bongino's response to this was that people have choices, though they may not be pleasant ones. He is, of course, correct but it really came across as "sucks to be you" and if I wasn't already disposed to his position, I would likely NOT support a politician with such an attitude.
I think part of the reason Dan could have such an attitude is that he is currently quite wealthy. Hence he can make choices that are at best 'inconvenient" in terms of paperwork relative to a person in the middle class who may have to upend their entire life. So I do think that Dan's current situation resulted in a kind of blind spot on the issue.
Currently I am NOT in favor of government run single payer healthcare because of the other reason Dan gave for the against it: Government tyranny.
Like many other things, the COVID pandemic showed me the REAL danger that a sprawling government is. We saw government mandates to take experimental products. Government interfering with doctor-patient relationships via propaganda and other means to prevent the use of known drugs and therapies. We saw it collude with private entities to end the livelihoods of people who opposed the government.
We even had government and non-government people talking about declining medical care to those who refused the jab. And this doesn't even include calls for jailing and worse done by non-government actors.
That was enough to let me know that the government cannot be trusted. Dan failed to bring this up and perhaps will do so when he does part 2. But I think this is what Dan had in mind when he talked about the government having the monopoly on violence, which is inescapable vs. a private company which is escapable. Bringing myself back into the discussion, I declined the poke and fortunately quickly found other employment. If the government had the power to force me to take said poke and could deny me access to any and everything (say via CBDC), I would have been screwed.
My current belief is that since government cannot be trusted, that private insurance needs to be disconnected from employment at prices that are not "whole paycheck". Related to this is that the price gouging has got to be addressed. There is possibly a government role there.
Dan did make the correct argument on the issue of taxes. Cenk tried to make the argument that we cannot ask those who wish to see higher taxes volunteer to pay them because then people would opt out of the things needed for the "public good." So they would refuse to fund things like the Iraq war, Israel's current behavior, Ukraine, etc.
Dan agreed and so do I. The government may make a tax argument for domestic stuff like roads, police, etc. And that's a 'may" because there may be other means to fund these things. But lets assume they can. The other stuff, should not be on the backs of the taxpayers without their explicit permission.
But what was most off-putting about Cenks' taxation argument is that he kept saying that the government was *giving* money to corporations as if the money *belongs* to the government. I fundamentally disagree with this. The money earned by people and corporations belong to them. It is their property. I find it offensive that Cenk and others think that 75% (or whatever) of what make over say, 150k somehow belongs to "society" because there are things they want to do.
When I see money being spent on illegal aliens that was taken under threat of force from citizens and legal residents I am very..shall we say...not happy. When I see tax money sent to Ukraine which the US used tax payer dollars to destabilize (I have a video on it), I am...upset.
Dan is absolutely correct that the government needs to be shrunk, programs eliminated and once THAT is done, we can talk about what MAY be the "fair share" that certain people ought to pay. It was very clear that there are many government programs and agencies, both federal and state that are vampire grift operations that need to be ended. For example, back to the illegal alien problem. There are entire entities, getting govt money to literally break federal law. This should not be happening.
So to close, I think Dan and others need to revisit their commentary on healthcare. Saying you have options, not necessarily good, is not a convincing argument and is why the ACA not only passed but remains popular. There are certainly dangers of government run single payer, but at the very minimum the idea that affordable insurance can only be gotten via employment is ripe for the picking.
