Re: What is the evolutionary basis of a state run health care system

There is no evolutionary basis for any health care system or for that 
matter any human cultural invention.  No natural forces are involved.  You 
are confusing cultural change, sometimes called cultural evolution, with 
biological evolution.  The former has nothing to do with biological 
evolution.  In fact I might argue that a health care system by its very 
nature circumvents natural selection. So in a biological sense you are 
asking a question to which there is no answer.  

There is one rather obtuse means by which a health care system may be 
evaluated as part of human evolution.  Humans are social organisms, adapted 
to living and interacting in super-family groups.  Our biology and 
behaviors were shaped by evolution for a life of gathering and hunting, a 
very successful life style that let humans migrate widely across the Earth. 
 Since the human shift to an agricultural life style, only some 
8,000-10,000 years ago, human culture and our technology has changed 
drastically, but our biology has changed very little.  To explore why human 
culture has derived such things as health care systems, and many other 
altruistic acts, things that assure the well-being of non-relatives, you 
might read books like, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, by Paul Shepard 
(1998, Island Press). Many of us think that many human problems are derived 
from our gathering-hunting biology/culture that is in various ways 
maladaptive in what is now a very much altered environment.  As an example, 
 obtaining enough protein in gathering/hunting societies has long been a 
human dietary problem, and an evolutionary solution involves sensory likes 
and preferences for meat as food, not to mention meat is easier to eat and 
less toxic than plant foods.  Such likes and needs helped instigate a 
desire to participate in the arduous and even dangerous hunt.  But in our 
modern societies that can provide excess amounts of meat, our former 
beneficial behavior leads to poor dietary choices and poor health.  Read 
Samuel Pepys diary (April 4th, 1663) to learn about diets even worse than 
our own.  
So evolution can contribute to human culture conventions, but only 
indirectly by the way it has shaped human intellect, behavior, and biology. 
Thus it is rather ironic that some religious traditions, whose aim is to 
illuminate and understand the human condition, are at odds with science and 
deny any evolutionary explanations.