Swartz: Well what I favor is a national system of health insurance, and under a national system of health insurance, we could have a variety of scenarios but in particular, I think it's important that everybody in this country have financial access to medical care. I think of this as a social compact where everybody would have to enroll in a plan and in particular this would be a plan of their choice, and in exchange for everyone enrolling in a health insurance plan, we would make sure that any kind of catastrophic medical cares that they encountered would be paid for.

Low income people would get help in paying for this health insurance and the additional money for that I think should come from high income people, as well as employers helping to pay for this. I think that part of my pushing for this kind of a national health system is that the current system is beginning to fray and unravel. Particularly, a lot of employers right now do not want to be at risk for the rate at which health insurance costs have been increasing. So I think we need to be in a conversation, a national conversation, about how we restructure how we pay for health care. But it should be something that everybody is part of.

Ghate: Well, my framework is Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Objectivism, which is a philosophy that says you should guide your life exclusively by reason and the facts of this world, not faith and appeals to the supernatural. But most important for this debate I think is that it's a philosophy of individualism, which holds that your aim in life should be your own individual happiness, and so each individual has the right to his own life, his liberty, his property, and the pursuit of his own happiness.

So why am I opposed to nationalized health care? Well, I'm opposed to it because I think it represents an assault on the freedom of the individual. Under a nationalized health care system, whatever the particulars of the scheme, I as an individual can no longer work hard and spend my earnings, my money on my own health as I judge best. I now have to take into account, I have to consider what the government thinks is best---what tests it has approved or has not approved, what drugs it has approved and not approved. I can no longer pursue my own judgments and my own interests. And I can no longer pursue my own happiness really, because the government is now forcing me to pay for the medical services of other people, which means it's forcing me to pursue the life and happiness of other people.

But I think America is a system of independence, where we're not our brother's keeper, and so I reject the whole idea that there is a right to health care, because I think with such a so-called right, it would mean that some individuals are forced to pay for the services, the health care, the medical tests and so on of other people. I think the so called "right to health care" is actually a fundamental violation of a person's freedom and of his individual rights, and so what you see economically, I think, in a nationalized health care system, as in any form of nationalization, whether it's the energy industry, the airline industry, is actually economic destruction, not economic prosperity. So I think we need more freedom in medicine, not less.