I keep seeing discussion about same sex marriage, and often see variations on this question:

"So what's the big deal to the right wing, why do they care so much about the marriage issue?

Of course I have often wondered the same thing myself. As it happens, in summer 2003 I received some answers. The memo from "Focus on the Family" which I include here was sent out to everyone on an email group to which I belong, the sender having assumed that everyone in the group was on their side of the issue.

I kept it around because it explains so much.

 

If we had universal, single payer health care, a fantastic number of legal actions would presumably become unnecessary. I'm not an attorney, so someone please fill me in if I've got this wrong somehow. But this is the way it seems to me:

Right now, if you have a health problem in the US, and it is in any way caused by something someone else did, you have to go to court so you can get your medical bills paid. You (or perhaps your insurance company, if you have insurance) have to sue the doctor who treated you incorrectly, or the person whose steps you fell on, or the person whose car you were riding in when it crashed, or the person who ran into the car. Typically the case takes years to settle, causes untold stress, and no one is happy at the end.

It seems to me that if our medical needs were covered, regardless of the reason or person at fault, we wouldn't all need to sue each other like this. Then folks could stop kicking about high jury awards and the price of malpractice insurance and a thousand related headaches that we as a society have to deal with, all because we don't do single payer health care.