Like the Boogey Man, those two words are continually trotted out to scare one and all from even considering the concept. In case you have forgotten in all the frenetic hype and hyperbole over the past several decades on the subject, so-called socialized medicine - at its core - is much like insurance. It is essentially spreading the health costs over many people so that the unlucky few faced with a crippling illness do not have to cripple their family finances in the process. The primary difference is that if we had “socialized medicine,” we would not have to also fund the multimillion dollar salaries of insurance company CEOs, agent commissions, advertising expenses, and Wall Street level shareholder profits before the first dime is spent on actual health care of anyone.
Of course, those pocketing all that loot don’t want to lose it which is why they try to paralyze your thought processes to prevent you from enacting even the simplest safety net against catastrophic illness. They want to keep the burden shifted to those who were not born to rich parents and those who sadly lost the disease/accident lottery.
Their one argument of merit attacking the concept is the bugaboo that government is inefficient, as if the megalithic HMOs weren’t.
And, since they don’t have sufficient arguments on the actual respective merits, they attempt to divert attention by connotatively loading the term “socialized medicine”with associations to Sovietism and/or Communism, our once and possibly future enemy. Unfortunately, the smear tactics have worked making us forget the “Golden Rule” we learned in Sunday School about doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Instead, they glorify that only Gold Rules when it comes to access to medical care.
What is fascinating about the opponents’ smoke and mirrors camouflaging their lack of substance is that this country is already heavily “socialized” in much of what it does and it has successfully been that way for many years. While the Socialist Party elected almost no one since its creation back in the early 1900s, most of their ideas were ultimately incorporated into law by Republican as well as Democratic administrations.
For instance, we have “socialized” schooling. It couldn’t be called anything else if you use the same voodoo linguistics favored by opponents of socialized medicine. Think about it. We have universal free education for everyone through high school regardless of ability or parentage. It is paid for by everyone out of tax dollars. That’s how you were educated. That is how everyone except the uber rich are still being educated. Is there anyone out there who thinks we should leave children behind merely because they can’t afford to go to private school?
We have had “socialized” fire and crime prevention since the 1800s. The fire department doesn’t go only to the biggest mansions anymore. It goes to what is on fire regardless of how wealthy the owner is. No one except maybe curmugeons think we should go back to the bad old days when private fire departments protected only the houses of those who paid for the privilege.
We have always had “socialized” military and national security. The Coast Guard does not check your Dun and Bradstreet rating before steaming out in the storm when the SOS is received. In fact, almost all rescue operations are socialized ones. If your child is lost, everyone shows up to search and it doesn’t have to be just someone like Paris Hilton missing.
“Socialized” highways and bridges? Absolutely. Whether a beat up pickup truck or a Rolls Royce, the drivers of those cars are charged exactly the same for building our highway infrastructure, even on toll bridges. There is “socialized” water delivery and sewage removal. There is “socialized” airport construction and air traffic control. There is “socialized” building and food inspection to keep us safe whether it is caviar or chitlins being scrutinized for samonella. Does anyone seriously suggest it should be otherwise in this day and age?
“Socialized” air waves for radio and tv? Of course. There are some channels that are only available by paying extra, but the core networks are still free to both Bill Gates and Joe Six Pack. The air waves are actually owned by the public despite some sell off going on by a Republican Administration wanting to reward its rich campaign contributors who want the airwaves and internet for themselves.
Wanna bet whether the President wants to give up his “socialized” Secret Service protection? He is rich enough to afford his own Pinkerton guards, but for all his rhetoric about pigs dining at the public trough, he certainly wants to keep dining at the “trough” himself at every opportunity.
And, have you forgotten Social Security, one of the most successful programs of all time in just about every criteria you can name, notwithstanding the hysteria the Republicans try to create? But, that is a much longer topic that needs to be addressed at a different time. Suffice to say Franklin Roosevelt’s experiment is still useful and better than any of the other alternatives.
We even have a certain amount of “socialized” medicine already. Emergency rooms don’t discriminate depending on whether the victim is wearing a cummerbund or not. Similarly, the universal access of the ADA looks to whether there is a disability rather than the social status of the beneficiaries when enforcing such laws. All they need to be is disabled.
It is legitimate to want to insure that incompetencies, inefficiencies and potential corruption be rooted out whenever genuine instances of such abuses of any system are discovered. But, if that were the sole test for whether “socialized medicine;” i.e., health care for all, should be in a government agency rather than the mishmash of profiteering private companies, then President Bush should have been fired long ago and the Homeland Security Department would not exist. Does the acronym FEMA and the city of New Orleans come to mind?
Come to think of it, do the private companies of Wall Street, which were supposed to be so brilliant and efficient that they didn’t even need regulation, really strike you as all that incompetent-free now that the whole housing and lending fiascos have been revealed? It looks like the conservatives are screaming at the top of their lungs that we must instantly institute “socialized banking.” The current attempts to reward the incompetents responsible for our snowballing banking crisis seems to be little other than a socialized bailout using taxpayer funds and guarantees which means more taxpayer funds if something goes wrong.
While I aplaud your calling the governments programs what they really are, socialism, I don't understand why you think they're so successful. Take Social Security, for example. It's already costing us 5% GDP growth every year according to Martin Feldstein of Harvard U. Yet it only pays enough for retirees to live in poverty.
Another example of the faiure of socialism is education. The indoctrination centers called schools are producing worse results every year while costing more & more. Private schools, on the other hand, cost less per pupil & deliver better results.
I'll think about the wonderful socialist road system's success the next time I'm in traffic.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
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Darren Wolfe (4 articles, 125 quicklinks, 79 diaries, 601 comments)
on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 7:42:20 PM
There is no need for socialized health care. Check out Canad
Socialism is government ownership and management of an entire industrial sector, where everybody in that sector works for the government. There are no competitors in that sector. (In contrast, communism is government ownership of all assets in the country, which can only happen when the government is not a democracy.)
In much of the world, a classic example of socialism is emergency and security services, 100% owned and operated by the government. In the US, high schools is almost socialism because private high schools are allowed to compete with it.
Now let's talk health care. Globally, fully socialized health care is very rare. One can argue that the UK comes closest to socialized health care in the developed world - because the government owns and operate almost the entire health care system, and all workers are government employees. Such a system has problems, typical of inefficient and sometimes corrupt government welfare services.
But other developed countries DO NOT have socialized health care. France has a somewhat complicated mixed system - but just about all things French are like that! Contrary to popular American belief, Canada does not have a socialized health care system. Because all health workers work in the private sector, and majority of hospitals are privately owned.
What Canada has done, and this is the smart part, is to socialize the health insurance industry. Under government control, health insurance is given to all citizens and permanent residence, making it universal. On the cost side, government controls payments to health care workers and hospitals, but the fee schedules are set by the colleges of physicians with public expert inputs. The professionas are well paid, and do their jobs well. Administration overhead is paper thin, and no one worry about not getting care. This give people a tremendous peace of mind, and business a degree of competitive advantage because they don't have to carry employees health insurance cost.
Who lost? The health insurance companies of course. But the lost is not total. First there are a lots of other things to insure - auto, home, business etc. Second, government health insurance covers only hospital care - which is the biggie that scares people. Non-hospital care including drugs, dental care, and cosmatic care are not covered. Private insurance takes care of that business.
This single act alone, take the health insurance business from the insurance companies, made all the difference. Not only care can become universal, it frees society from the abuse and profiteering of private insurance. And it allows the private sector to run health care efficiently, with all the latest technologies available. The drug companies continue to the 100% private, but government caps how much they can charge drugs sold to hospitals.
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TomK (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 207 comments)
on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 8:33:48 PM
Darren, you need to check out a basic book on political ideas. Or read Norman Thomas' autobiography, A Socialist's Faith.
Comparing Social Security, Medicare, public schools, or the VA Health System to socialism is like comparing your driveway to a Henry Moore sculpture. Yes, they are both hard, but that's about all they have in common.
To reason that some public schools fail to meet the needs of some students, therefore socialism is a failure, is both absurd and unwarranted.
And to extend that "reasoning" to health care is preposterous. Think, then speak (or write); I hope these words can save you some future grief.
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R. Queisser (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 60 comments)
on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 8:43:35 PM
My definition of socialism comes from the socialists themselves. See here & here.
I'm not sure I'd hold up Thomas as some kind of great guy, he had no scruples as his own words show:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism', they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
However, his words do indicate how socialistic the US has become. The "liberal" agenda is the one that's been implemented. The so-called conservatives not only won't roll it back, they support it now.
The problem with socialism is it's inability to do any kind of economic calculation. Without property, prices, & profits (or the lack thereof) there's no way for the bureaucrat to know if his "services" are valued or even needed by the people. Only business can do that since they have a balance sheet to look at.
The theory of economic calculation shows that in the socialistic community economic calculation would be impossible.
In any large undertaking the individual works or departments are partly independent in their accounts. They can reckon the cost of materials and labour, and it is possible at any time for an individual group to strike a separate balance and to sum up the results of its activity in figures. In this way it is possible to ascertain with what success each separate branch has been operated and thereby to make decisions concerning the reorganization, limitations or extension of existing branches or the establishment of new ones. Some mistakes are of course unavoidable in these calculations. They arise partly from the difficulty of allocating overhead costs. Other mistakes again arise from the necessity of calculating from insufficiently determined data, as, e.g. when in calculating the profitability of a certain process, depreciation of the machinery employed is determined by assuming a certain working life for the machine. But all such errors can be confined within certain narrow limits which do not upset the total result of the calculation. Whatever uncertainty remains is attributed to the uncertainty of future conditions inevitable in any imaginable state of affairs.
It seems natural then to ask why individual branches of production in a socialistic community should not make separate accounts in the same manner. But this is impossible. Separate accounts for a single branch of one and the same undertaking are possible only when prices for all kinds of goods and services are established in the market and furnish a basis of reckoning. Where there is no market there is no price system, and where there is no price system there can be no economic calculation.
(snip)
These are the reasons that socialism fails. Just look around the world, Cuba, USSR, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Guyana under Burnham. All socialist & all poverty stricken. The socialistic aspects of the US show the same failure. It's time to smell the toast burning.
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Darren Wolfe (4 articles, 125 quicklinks, 79 diaries, 601 comments)
on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 4:27:09 PM
