[michaelochurch]

I've paid (either directly, or by an employer having paid money that otherwise could have gone to me) about $60,000 into the medical insurance system since leaving college. (That's 10 years times $500 per month, which is a low estimate.) I've also paid several hundred thousand dollars in taxes to a government that prioritized blowing up Iraq over protecting us from things that might actually kill us, like cancer and heart disease.

Given the amount paid, I see health care as a right, not a privilege. We already have high taxes and high insurance premiums. Yet we live in a society where it's pretty much random whether your insurance even covers you when you get sick.