Why Socialized Medicine is Wrong

I lived in Japan for 7 years.

National Health Care ("socialized" as you say)

I paid about 100 bucks a month for world class health care.

What do you think of that?

Now I'm back in the US paying way too much for mediocre coverage!

canadian bacon wrote:

If you think that the medical system is so horrible now, just wait until someone introduces socialized medicine. I'll support any idea OTHER than that. And don't quote or reference anything from Michael Moore because he's a proven douchebag.

and what FACT from a MM movie can you point out as false?

what you call socialized medicine has proven time and time again to be better, cheaper and more effective than our current system

in health care a free market solution works against the patients best interest thus is inherently designed to failure (from the patients point of view)

It seems my earlier post was deleted. I was merely trying to point out that rather than simply being a case of the left who want universal healthcare versus the laissez-faire who want it left to people to make their own provisions. Rather there are issues involved which have nothing to do with such ideological battles.

Perhaps the most important is the calculation problem. Mises and Hayek first raised this problem with central planning. But it also has implications for less than complete planning. See discussion of the general problem here:

"Economic Calculation and the Limits of Organization," Review of Austrian Economics 9, no. 2 (1996): 51-77

and some applications to healthcare here:

Meadowcroft, J. 2003. ‘The British National Health Service: Lessons from the “Socialist Calculation Debate”’, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 28, 3, pp. 307-26.

Meadowcroft, J. 2005. ‘Healthcare markets, prices and coordination: The epistemic explanation of government failure and the UK National Health Service’, HEC Forum: An International Journal of Healthcare Ethics, 17, 3, pp. 159-77.

I am a social worker and work with people who are sometimes homeless. Many of them are on Medicaid. Some of them have no health insurance at all. Preventative care does not prevent people from going to the emergency room with situations that are not a true emergency. Unfortunately sometimes the people I work with lack the insight to follow the preventative steps the doctor prescribes. Sometimes they lack the ability to monitor their own health symptoms and plan when they need to go to the doctor. Sometimes they have no transportation or cannot find a primary care physician who will take Medicaid.

One of the things I do in my job is help people access primary care. I work very hard to prevent people from going to the emergency room--both through helping them implement healthier routines and by trying to shunt them to cheaper alternatives--primary care physicians and Emergicare places that they can walk in without an appointment. I have some success, but some of the people I work with still end up at the emergency room with minor conditions that still have to be assessed often through expensive tests. I don't know what the answer is, but it is more complicated than simply covering preventative care--my people w/ Medicaid end up at the emergency room just as often as those without.

It is not so much that Michael Moore makes up facts. This may or may not be true.

His shortcoming is based on lack of understanding of economics and politics, and indeed the nature of knowledge in general. His attitude seems to be that we should be prepared to change our minds when new facts emerge. People rarely seem to change their minds in light of new theories though.

I am not aware of anybody pointing to the falsehoods in the theory of the market process (Mises, Kirzner etc.) and the lack of direction which ensues when the market process is inhibited.

You didn't answer my question. How much money do you give to charities? When you see homeless people who are panhandling on the side of the street, how much money do you give them? What do you offer them? If the answer is "nothing" then you are a hypocrite and your motives are not driven by altruism. Rather, you just want to tell others what they should do with their money.

hillary is hot wrote:

You didn't answer my question. How much money do you give to charities? When you see homeless people who are panhandling on the side of the street, how much money do you give them? What do you offer them? If the answer is "nothing" then you are a hypocrite and your motives are not driven by altruism. Rather, you just want to tell others what they should do with their money.

you do realize how patently stupid you sound right?

there is such a thing as being smart with money and that can be thought of in both collective and individual senses.

saying there are better ways to allocate tax dollars and better ways of governing does not relate to charity or altruism at all. you are comparing apples with medicine balls.

I'd say that your equating basic services (such as health care) to cash handouts to the homeless isn't all that reasonable. I don't give much to the homeless because have a good idea what they'll do with cash and because I know that there are better things they could be doing with their time than holding a cardboard sign. And I'm a big proponent of democratic socialism.

A question I might ask you, as a fan of libertarianism and personal responsibility: if you're robbed or attacked, do you steal from the incomes of other people by making a police inquiry? Why not leave the money of others out of this and hire you're own PIs and bodyguards? The same for leaving the district attorney out of this and hiring your own legal staff to prosecute the accused, because you have made it clear that public services come at everyone's expense, so do us the favor of denying these social welfare systems, such as police/fire departments and the DA's office and leave our money alone.

The cost to me for my "group" family coverage has increased steadily throughout the last decade - why? The answer always is: "You're in a high-claims" group. So, I pay for my co-workers' kids who are in rehab, their alcoholic husbands/wives, their medical costs for yielding to an unhealthy lifestyle, their blatant and unattended obesity, etc. I PAY. This isn't socialism? The healthy are burdened w/ the costs of the unhealthy?

Do not equate "nationalized" with socialism. The entire infrastructure of this country is "nationalized." We all pay for the schools, the bridges, the roads, etc. Do we call that socialism? These fears are indeed perpetuated by the largest medical and pharmaceutical lobbys the Hill has ever seen. After seeing my wife and parents through extensive terminal diseases, I am frustrated, confused, and have developed nothing less than a loathing for insurance providers, corporate medicine, and the control they exercise over the local medical community. The maze of provision and billing is created to obfuscate the process to the simple man. Triple billings, delayed billings, relentless paperwork; this is the design of the few and powerful. I'll admit the propaganda comes from both sides; but watch the political "shields" go up and name-calling (socialists) begin whenever a candidate brings up "health care - as if something so essential to every citizen should be automatically linked to socialism and failure. Next time they want to spend on the inumberable useless government projects we always read about, why don't we yell "socialism"?

You bring up a great point the largest example I can think of of socialism in our nation right now is our military. We provide food, a level of equality based on level of work, uniforms, shelter, medicine/ healthcare without copays, and finally armament. Now I have read numerous post arguing that our government is being hounded to move to this or that form of economic model. When in fact we have it the dreaded (s) right here in our back yard. I love it people don't even know when something is looking them right in the eye. You want to quit the socialist model? Move to MT live in the woods and drop off the grid. If you are too much of a trustafarian to do this and love your plastic bimbo wife and foreign cars and your unpaid for home keep up the show. But quit bitching because your kid will need his adhd pills soon and the new boob job will not come from your pocket and when you get into a wreck in that car do you pay cash? No you look to insurance companies who rake you over the coals, you think your premiums are high look to the kids right out of school making 50k or less with the same premiums. Good luck.

we already have socialized medicine. hmos, ins cos provide administered health care for those priviledged with managed care or insured care. an underclass of 125,000 uninsured people have to fend for themselves. the gov't has safety nets to catch the uninsured. the care isn't as good, and many die from no or poor medical care.

Not a fan of socialized medicine myself however i believe i the right to not be infected from some TB carrier from a 3rd world country either and i especially do not want to pay for that pleasure.

There was an excellent article some time ago in the LA times where they explained how hospitals were saving millions by steering illegal aliens into clinics instead of emergency rooms. As an example they cited a patient who had a drinking problem, by steering into preventitive care it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars a month. But his hospitalization and kidney treatments and ER costs were running 60 times that every freaking month!

I don't like the idea of someone breaking the law to get here and then abusing themselves and our social system to steal money out of my pocket and the same system does not allow me to afford insurance for myself. Especially when i myself have spent time in other countries where they refuse to treat a non citizen without an upfront payment.

Even socialized medicine countries such as Norway & Sweden

where i had to pay over 300 dollars upfront just to be seen for a friggin cold. bastards.

Modern Reality tells us if we do not change our system we will be forking out big dollars to treat almost everyone except our own citizens, and People will still get sick.

It would be a hell of alot cheaper to force people through preventive out patient facilities than bankrupting our hospital system. thin of it as paying for 5 quarts of oil versus rebuilding an engine. $20 or $1500?

in conclusion, vote for another republican so our national debt can reach 800 trillion.