I’d like you to perform a little thought experiment with me. I want you to think of some people you know in countries with socialized health care–usually, it is Canada and the UK. Have you ever talked to them about health care? If the answer is yes, I’m going to make a prediction: they ‘agree’ with your stance on the matter. And I’m going to go a little further: if we had the same friends in the UK and Canada, and you disagree with me on socialized health care, you will still assume your Canadian or British friends agreed with you over me.

Maybe it’s the questions. Maybe I ask them “do you like not having to pay for health care?” and they say “yeah, it’s great,” and you ask them “do you like having to go through government red tape in order to get health care?” and they say “man I hate it.” Perhaps I say “do you like that even those who are poor are afforded basic medical care?” and they say “it’s great, man” and you say “do you like paying extra taxes to pay for your health care?” and they say “no, it’s pretty lame.” But I think it’s more fundamental than that.

I think it’s the basic premise: nobody likes dealing with health care, period, socialized or not. There are reasons for this. The first, and perhaps the most obvious and overlooked, is that nobody likes being sick or injured. Americans don’t like it eather. Generally speaking going to the doctor is unpleasant because the only time you are going is when there is something wrong with you. The second reason is that nobody likes paperwork. Nobody likes doing taxes. Nobody likes waiting for administrative red tape to be cleared. Nobody likes dealing with bureaucracy. And let’s face it. That’s basically what government is.

There are plenty of arguments to be made for and against socialized health care. Fair enough. Let’s not bring the Canadians into this, shall we? Because I’m pretty sure you and I can look at the same group and see two very different things.

(I’d prefer if we don’t bring up our experience with Medicare or Medicaid, either–I don’t generally feel those are terribly successful, but that has nothing to do with why socialized health care as an entire system will work or fail.)