The case for healthcare reform, in a nutshell

From Sullivan, what I think, in the end, is the single most persuasive argument for healthcare reform that one can make to a conservative:

One final thing: most Americans do not want people dying in the streets.

If you have guaranteed emergency room care for the uninsured at public expense, you have already effectively socialized medicine. It makes no sense not to bring these people into the insurance system, and to offer less expensive, long-term preventive healthcare.

That, to me, is it right there. We already socialize an ER visit for someone who can't pay--a free market, in that case, would just be letting the person die. And that's unacceptable to us. But by the time you're socializing the ER visit, which is very costly, it makes more sense to let that person have access to the much less expensive routine care that can prevent that costly ER visit in the first place.