[rubyrescue]

I don't want to make this a huge political debate but i want to address the point that 'X deciding who lives and dies', where X=government. Currently we're just solving for a different value of X.

Certainly people are deciding who lives and dies; life-saving care is denied specifically by insurers, and implicitly by the fact that many don't have any means to pay for care.

That's not an argument for or against single payer or full govt-run healthcare (though i am for that - i just don't have time to get that into the discussion)...

[yummyfajitas]

Actually, I'm curious - do you have much evidence that insurers are deciding who lives or dies? I haven't even seen compelling evidence that having insurance at all (let alone variations within insurance) will determine whether you live or die.