"Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the capacity or opportunity to become a high wage earner.

The studies I have seen on any social health care system in any other country seem to indicate that these programs aren't free, so how can it be a hand out ?"

"So you are saying some pay some don't? They are not free because taxes are raised on all to pay for the Socialized Health Care."

You're both right to an extent, I think. There's little difference between a shared roadway paid for by taxes and a shared health care system paid for by taxes. But health care gets tricky for two reasons:

1. How do you make allowances for people unfairly pulling from the system?

2. The other socialized systems still have eventual access to the innovations coming from the US system. Sure, there are also other medical gains being made, but the overwhelming majority still come out of this system, and the profit motive clearly drives that.

It would seem to me that Obama's ideas around cost control and federal insurance plans for folks who fall through the cracks is a better approach than a fully socialized system.

And pharmaceutical companies make a significantly higher profit per dollar invested than do oil companies. Oil companies only get the headlines because their volumes are higher so their absolute profit is more. Why are we not talking about windfall profit taxes for these other industries? Per headcount and dollar invested, they are "raping" us far more than is Exxon, etc.