Faded Red

Count me among those who welcome "socialist" ideas to be considered with other ideologies in an open minded discussion of pragmatic choices.

Socialized medicine works well in the UK. It started off awkward and then Margaret Thatcher, and the team of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair refined it. Thatcher had been quite proud of how low was the percentage of GDP that Health care represented as compared to the US.

In the larger challenge of managing the exploding costs of entitlements these kinds of practical solutions are a path to success. With a single payer health care system we can streamline Medicare, Medicaid, Worker's Compensation, Disability, and adjust the expenses to target medical care rather than administration, redundancy, marketing and profit.

Great news that the profit-driven rhetoric against universal health care is losing its punch. "Socialized medicine" is a false bogeyman that distracts us from the core problem: We want efficient, cost-effective and universal access to health care for all American citizens. We want doctors and patients to make health care decisions, not insurance company meddlers, intent on maximizing profit by reducing coverage.

The 800 pound gorilla in the mix? 35% insurance company profit and "overhead," more than enough to cover everyone currently without access. A single payer system like Medicare costs under 5% to run (no profit, no advertising, no obscene CEO salaries), and gets payment in the hands of physicians without haggling or endless obstruction by people whose jobs are to prevent, rather than make, payments.

One of the lines used to horrify people with the thought of government involvement was how individual choice would be eliminated by the government. People by now have realized that private insurance companies limit your options just as much as government ever would. Frankly, I've dealt with private insurance and the government plans when I had to put my mother into a nursing home. The government was no worse and in some ways superior to the private companies.