Wednesday, August 12, 2009

What's wrong with socialized medicine?

The word "Socialized" conjures images of bread lines in Russia. Socialized only means that it is a service that everyone pays to provide. Right now we have many socialized services. The police, fire department, streets and sanitation, schools, medicare, social security, libraries, state schools, parks, water treatment, border patrol, coast guard, and military are all supported with your tax dollars. Why draw the line there? It could be argued that all of these group-expenditures benefit all of us. Protecting my neighbor from burglars protects my house too; putting out my neighbors fire protects my house; uneducated populace is a threat to my safety; etc. But I would argue that the health of your neighbor affects you as well. The higher his/her health risk, the higher everyone in his/her insurance plan has to insure. The health of a nation can be one of its greatest assets. For us, our poor health has become a huge liability.

We currently have socialized medicine here in the US. We also have a single- payer system. And then we have the pay-or-die system. The US military provides socialized medicine. The doctors receive a salary from the government so they don't need to try to maximize patient visits. The single-payer system is where the gov't acts as an insurance provider and is called Medicare. The rest of us have a pay-or-die system where if you can't pay, or if your insurance does not want to pay, you don't get treatment. Medicare and the Veteran's administration are consistently rated higher in satisfaction from their consumers, and they cost less. A lot of physicians and medical offices prefer working with government plans because they are not always changing the rules and dodging the way the private insurance companies do.

If I am traveling in France and get sick. They will treat me virtually for free. No one in France has a problem with this, because they all get free treatment as well. Most other industrialized nations have either socialized medicine or a single-payer system. And none of them would trade theirs for our system. Have you ben to Paris? It is nothing like the cold-war era Soviet Union. So don't be fooled by all this throwing around of the term "socialized".
This system of making profit off of illness, and others maximizing profit by not paying for treatment is terrible.

I am willing to pay more taxes to support this project. Right now, my family costs up to 20k a year to insure. I would gladly pay 3k a year more in tax if it would remove that 20k.


And as a business owner, why should I be responsible for paying for the health insurance of my employees? I cannot afford to hire anyone if I have to pay an additional 10k/year to subsidize their health care? Making businesses responsible for providing health care makes it harder for businesses to thrive. Everyone should contribute, and everyone should try to stay healthy. The government should run ads and billboards telling people to eat right and exercise.

Check out the Mad As Hell Doctors website.

1 comment:

  1. I think the protesters are just an excuse for congress to water down a bill they're getting paid to water down. The majority of people voted for a change, and even most of the people I know who despise Obama and the Donks admit health care in the US is a disaster. The vocal opposition is just a smokescreen. Plus, the media and the political class benefit by caving in to people with only the most childish understanding of the debate, because they can further dumb down American political discourse. It's not a conspiracy - it's just money and politics as usual.

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