'Socialized Medicine' Quackery: There should be no place in health care debate for "overt deception"

WP: 'Socialized Medicine' Quackery
By Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Monday, October 8, 2007; Page A17

Nearly two decades after the West's victory over communism, one might have thought it possible to discuss reform of the health-care system without invocations of the old saw "socialized medicine." But no. "At least Mr. Baucus isn't disguising his socialist goal," a Wall Street Journal editorial claimed about the Montana senator's push to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program. "In sum, SCHIP turns out to be socialized medicine for 'kids,' " wrote Post columnist Robert Novak. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the "SCHIP bill is not a back door to get socialized medicine. They went straight to the front door." Rudy Giuliani argued: "The American way is not single-payer, government-controlled anything. That's a European way of doing something; that's frankly a socialist way of doing something."...

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To the extent that any health insurance scheme involves spreading among members of society the financial risk of getting sick, all insurance "socializes" the risk. This is, of course, not what people mean when they level charges of "socialized medicine." This term is never used in reference to police protection, fire departments or highways -- all of which are provided by government....

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Socialized medicine cannot mean that the government pays for part or all of health care while it is provided by doctors in their private practices and at private and (frequently) for-profit hospitals, commercial drugstores and the rest. If that were the case, Medicare would be socialized medicine. Maybe the people throwing around that epithet believe Medicare is "socialized medicine," but they certainly have not told the elderly -- who are well satisfied by Medicare. Most do not have the courage to openly oppose -- and seek to end -- Medicare because it is "socialized medicine." Indeed, some of those who invoke the epithet have praised, as Novak put it, the "popular private Medicare program."

None of the proposals by the three major Democratic presidential candidates can be characterized as socialized medicine....

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It is absurd to call an expansion of government payments for health care in the existing private delivery system socialized medicine. Politics may be full of hype, exaggeration or partisan bickering, but there should be no place for overt deception. A serious debate about whether and how to reform the American health-care system requires that we eliminate comments whose only purpose is to mischaracterize and misinform....

(Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and the author of "No Margin, No Mission: Health Care Organizations and the Quest for Ethical Excellence," chairs the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/07/AR2007100701033.html?nav=most_emailed

If it did, you wouldn't be hearing about single payer.

I don't get how people can admit (barely) that a problem exists yet refuse to consider solutions.

I am losing more and more respect for Conservatives every day. I did not have that much to begin with, but I am a "to each their own" type of person. lately, I feel pushed into having to decide if the ones who refuse to ever consider any new information or outside solutions are assholes or just stupid. It's a case by case decision, of course.

Until the 1930s, the AMA opposed health INSURANCE, and some states outlawed it. With the Depression, first hospital coverage was allowed -- since it kept some hospitals from going bankrupt. Later, the docs finally came around to agreeing to coverage of medical visits. Still, in 1965, the AMA opposed Medicare as 'socialized medicine.' Now, it's a powerful health insurance industry that's behind the opposition not just to government-run but also to government-expanded health coverage; but their own line of business had previously been opposed as 'socialized medicine.' In short, this nonsense has long infected American political debate over healthcare coverage, and it will likely, unfortunately, not stop infecting us in the near future.