I think your framing of the health care issue is interesting. Is this original to you? I don't think I've heard anyone else frame it in quite that way. I'm curious if any of your libertarian-minded or economically conservative friends find it persuasive. To be honest, it does seem a little like taking the long way around to me -- since I'm not ideologically committed to the idea that in general, market solutions are preferable to publicly financed solutions, it's not necessary for me to identify the "real" consumer, etc. It's enough to just look at the data and say, "Well, it looks like nations with a single-payer health system spend less and have better health outcomes than the U.S., so I'm for it."

However, I think your framing might actually be more effective at getting people to support single-payer. As we know, Americans tend to recoil at the very mention of "socialized medicine," but perhaps they would support it if they could be persuaded idea that single-payer is actually the real free-market solution, and that HMOs and the like are in fact anti-competitive.

If you can do this kind of jujistu on other liberal issues -- say, outsourcing, environmental protection, affirmative action, funding basic research -- John Kerry should hire you as a campaign advisor.

Some more quick comments:

Yeah, but it's not like I actually resent the greedy corporations ripping people off. That's just their nature -- it would be like resenting the mosquito for sucking your blood. I'm all in favor of letting corporations go ahead and do what they do best -- selling stuff at a profit and making money for their shareholders. That's a good system, it works, I'm in favor of it, huzzah for capitalism and all that.

However, the corporation's desire to sell stuff at a profit and make money for their shareholders will inevitably at some point come into conflict with the public interest -- for instance, our interest in clean air, humane working conditions, equality of opportunity in hiring, or having some assurance in advance that the product you are purchasing will not fail disastrously at a critical moment and kill you. That's why we need regulation to take those kind of public interest decisions away from CEOs -- who, when faced with a choice between profit and and the public interest, will -- quite naturally and understandably -- choose profit (almost) every single time.

(I know that's not universally true, but regulation has the added benefit of resolving the dilemmas an ethically minded CEO is likely to face -- do I do the morally right thing, even if that puts my company at a disadvantage relative to our competitors? For instance, he/she might be thinking: "I want to reduce emissions, I just don't want to do it unilaterally." If the ethical thing to do -- reducing emissions -- is regulated and everyone has to play by the same rules, then there's no dilemma.)

I thought this poster ("Redshift") in Kos's comments thread put it very well (this was in response to an observation by Donald Trump that the economy tends to do better under Democrats than under Republicans):