Father bitten by a spider?

I completely disagree. The big difference between healthcare and the automobile industry is that healthcare deals with the well-being of humans, not the transport of them. Isn't the government supposed to take care of its people, making sure everyone has an equal chance at life? If you don't believe so, then I encourage you to make sure martial law is never enacted in times of pathogenic outbreak; let's just let the corporations decide how to best keep the disease from spreading. Everyone on this planet has a right to life, and thus should have an equal opportunity to medical treatments necessary to keep them alive.

I agree that you should never be taxed for not buying a service, but that's not what Obama's health care plan does. It requires every American citizen to have healthcare, meaning they will be paying for a service they have - they just get to choose who they want to purchase from, the government or a corporation, with the government option fluid enough to be manageable for any person's income level.

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The health care system takes care of people, and is mandatory for any community to have available. It is not mandatory for it to be free. Health INSURANCE is a service provided in a capitalistic manner, with competing companies and prices/benefits. The plan marketed as health care is the government attempting to establish its own INSURANCE service.

You can also argue that transport is almost mandatory to survive in today's world, where businesses aren't run from home (most of the time) and many people live half an hour's DRIVE from their workplace. Even living only 5 minutes away from work by car, it takes me 20 minutes to walk. It's not difficult to say that every family needs a vehicle (particularly in more rural areas without mass transit), even if there are those who get by fine without one or can't afford it. Granted there are established mass transit services, but there are no penalties for not having a monthly subway/bus pass. Even with those services, the bus routes are run through a civilian and capitalistic business, not the government itself. Forcing a paid service/commodity upon people (or punishing them for not happily paying something that they can't budget for) is not the solution we need for our healthcare system. If the insurance needs to be made more affordable, it will also likely cover less for those who could already afford it (the money lost in payments has to come from somewhere, or else the insurance system cannot profit and thus cannot survive).[/COLOR]