Friday, August 14, 2009

Don't Be Afraid of Socialized Medicine

Look, we have socialized health care now. I'm not referring to Medicare or the VA, although they certainly qualify.
 
I'm referring to every health insurance plan, public or private. They all socialize the costs across a pool of contributors, through payments called premiums (private) or taxes (public).
 
The difference between private and public socialized health care is that the private systems skim off some portion of the contributions to the owners or shareholders of the system, while the public systems do not. Because of this, in the private systems there is motivation to limit - ration - the health care that is supported or paid for.
 
So you see people denied enrollment because of "pre-existing" conditions - real or not - or booted out of the system through rescission, or simply denied the care their doctor determines they need.