Now, many Republicans who feel obliged to have some kind of health care "plan" endorse the health care tax deduction. Most just don't care very much about the uninsured. Giuliani, by contrast, is not indifferent to the plight of the uninsured. He actually seems to revel in it:

I don't like mandating health care. I don't like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country--the free market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We've got to let people make choices. We've got to let them take the risk--do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because, ultimately, if they don't, well, then, they may not be taken care of.

Where does this bizarrely punitive view of the health care system come from? It apparently arises from Giuliani's experience with welfare reform, which he constantly likens to health care. "You don't start off by promising you're going to insure everybody," he warned earlier this year. "It's the same mistake the Democrats made with welfare." So providing health coverage to the uninsured will make them irresponsible.

Of course, this analysis is insane, unless you think most of the uninsured lack coverage because they'd rather splurge at Best Buy than spend money on health insurance. Alas, this appears to be exactly what Giuliani believes. "[The uninsured] may be buying a television, ... they may be buying a cell phone," he said at last week's debate.

Giuliani also thinks that insulating people from the costs of sickness or injury will make them more likely to get sick or injured. "There is no incentive to wellness," he complains. Perhaps you thought wellness was an incentive in and of itself. Obviously, you lack Giuliani's grasp of free-market homilies. As Giuliani understands, when you don't pay the cost of a good, you have every incentive to consume more of it. That's why those of us with insurance are always borrowing handkerchiefs from people with communicable diseases or juggling steak knives barefoot.