Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
or to distill what you said in one word: socialism.
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Look, honestly, it isn't socialism, and I assume you are just trolling.
Let's accept first of all that we are discussing "socialism" within the context of a particular industry and not with respect to the entire US government (i.e., even if the US government were to control the means of production for all health care, it could be described as socialistic with respect to health care, but it wouldn't be a socialistic government in the aggregate, assuming it doesn't control all means of production in all industries, or even most industries).
With health care, people are confusing terms when they refer to "socialized medicine." Nobody is talking about or proposing socialized medicine. That is, in essence, what England has as its model. The doctors themselves are employed by the government. The Congress is not planning to adopt, nor will it adopt, that model. As a result, "socialized medicine" is a complete misnomer.
If the government were to adopt a single payor system (which many advocate, but which isn't even under consideration right now), it could be described as "socialized health insurance" because the government would be the only entity offering insurance. That won't be the case, and isn't being contemplated.
Instead, the Congress is proposing a system where private insurance remains (i.e., it isn't, by definition, socialism) and where the government also provides insurance as a competitor to the private insurance companies. In reality, if people would bother to think about it, we already have the government as a competitor in some limited areas of health care insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and nobody would properly describe our current system as "socialism." And before you get ahead of yourselves in saying the proposed plan will inevitably lead to elimination of all private insurance companies and the establishment of a single payor system, well, the CBO disagrees with you (per its report issued yesterday)..