Why is it that the United States, which is held out to be the greatest country in the world to live in by many and using many different standards, is the only Western country that does not have some form of socialized medicine? One reason is that opponents continue to refer to any universal health care program as just that, socialized medicine. The label alone is enough to prevent many people from supporting such an effort, without looking any deeper to the facts of the situation or the solutions it offers. The connotation behind the expression socialized medicine is that it is a system that belongs in a communist run country. Socialized medicine refers to a health care delivery system where the hospitals are owned by the government and the doctors and other caregivers, whether in a hospital, office or other setting, are all government employees. And while I agree that this is not the system that would be effective for this country and our problems, we do need a system of universal health care for many reasons.
English: Spending on U.S. healthcare as a percenta...
We need to get this to the Fiscal Cliff! What coul...
United StatesUniversal health care refers to a health care delivery system where there is a single payer for services, and that payer is the government. Of course, this requires administration on a local and national level by government agencies and their employees, but the hospitals, physicians and their offices and other health caregivers remain privately owned. This is the system that this country desperately needs. And while it is certainly not a perfect system, as we will examine later, it is far and away much better than the system we now have. Our current system is flawed beyond repair. Over 40 million Americans do not have any form of health care insurance or coverage of any kind. This costs the country in many...