<< Does anyone actually call it ‘socialsied’ medicine apart from the US public - the name itself seems to be the product of decades of subtle manipulation by vested interests.
Do you call the public school system ‘socialised’ education ? >>
I prefer to use the analogy of the police department. No one calls it a “socialized police department.” But it is viewed as a government service, like the roads, like the schools, to be provided to all and paid for by all.
Bandit hits the nail on the head: in the U.S., medical care is viewed as a profitable business rather than a required service.
It is certainly true that a government service requires prioritization. All health care service requires prioritization – until we can find a way to provide up-to-date, immediate care for everyone at no cost (an impossibilility), health care is a resource that needs to allocated and prioritized.
In the US, where the health care industry is viewed as a profitable business, prioritization of medical resources is based on money. Mickey Mantle got a liver transplant, but some poor uninsured working-class shmo in the inner city, who might have lived longer with it, can’t.
In countries with effective national (or provincial) systems, the prioritization is usually set by a medical board, with input from consumers/taxpayers, government, etc. And is usually based on need, rather than on wealth. Generally, people who are rich enough can opt for private care, just like people who are rich enough in the U.S. can opt for private schooling or a private security system.
Yes, the prioritization system under a national health care may mean that there can be long waits for non-emergency treatment. No system is perfect. Certainly in the U.S., if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a VERY long wait for non-emergency treatment – like, never. So I reject that argument against socialized health care: it’s a question of WHO has to wait, not a question of whether there are long waits.
Way back in the early 60s, when President Lyndon Johnson proposed Medicare for the aged, the doctors and drug companies rose with one voice to oppose “socialized medicine,” predicting that it would be the end of quality medicine, that no one would go to medical school in future, and on and on. They were wrong, and Medicare has been very profitable for them (and Medicare fraud has been very profitable for some of them.)
We do it for those over age 65, what’s so magic about that? Why can’t we do the same for EVERYONE?
IMHO, the main reason that we don’t have some form of national (or state) health care is that the moneyed interests – doctors and phramaceutical companies – would prefer to amass more wealth. Yes, I generalize, there are some doctors who are out to help people rather than to get rich, but they form a tiny minority, I’m afraid.
The moneyed interests have painted this false picture of socialized medicine as being some layer of hell. The very term “socialized” implies corrupt, inefficient, ineffective, Russian. Instead, those moneyed interests are quickly sending the U.S. system to an even lower layer of hell to protect their self-interests, and the public be damned. Medical costs are rising, companies can’t afford them, and more and more and more people will be uninsured and have no access.
BTW, one reason that medical costs rise is that the uninsured have to wait until their illness is an emergency, so they can get “free” treatment – ten or twenty times more expensive to use the emergency room than to get a quick antibiotic from a doctor’s office.
Jenner says: << [socialized medicine] seems to work well in the countries that have it. >>
Minor correction here: it works well in the developed countries that have it. For example, the German and Japanese and Swiss systems are excellent. The U.K., Canadian, French, and Dutch systems work very well on the whole. In developing or underdeveloped countries, I’d be very cautious of trusting the national system.
