House Headed Toward "Socialized Medicine"

Golly. Shut the windows. Lock the doors. In the dead of night, under the full moon, oozing stuff, it is coming...

If you want to have a conversation about improving access to health care, stop calling it "socialized medicine."

Do you consider Medicare and/or Medicaid "socialized medicine"?

"Socialized Medicine" is the scare term used by those wanting to protect their profits, such as the medical insurance, HMO, and drug industries.

BBB

Social health insurance is a method for financing health care costs through the collection of funds contributed by individuals, employers, and sometimes government subsidies.[1] It is one of the five main ways that health care systems are funded.[2]

Social health insurance systems are characterized by the presence of sickness funds which usually receive a proportional contribution of their members' wages. With this insurance contributions these funds generally pay part medical costs of their members, to the extent that the services are included in the, sometimes nationally defined, benefit package. Otto von Bismarck was the first to make social health insurance mandatory on a national scale (in Germany), but social health insurance was already common for many centuries before among guilds mainly in continental Europe.

History of the term
The term began as a pejorative phrase first popularized in 1920s and 1930s United States politics by conservative opponents of publicly operated health care, proposed during the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt and later championed by US Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and many more. Organizations that generally oppose expansion of government services still tend to use the phrase in that way.
However, others have pointed out that the US government already operates public health care. That approach to health care is provided by US Veterans Administration clinics and hospitals to former members of US military services.

Do you consider Medicare and/or Medicaid "socialized medicine"?

I don't consider Medicare to be "socialized medicine", since only those individuals, who've paid into and participated in the SS/medicar program can qualify for medicare benefits.

Well, no surprise that Miller uses the term then.

Coolwhip wrote:

Well, no surprise that Miller uses the term then.

I didn't write the article.

Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.

Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.

Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.

The term Socialized Medicine is used to describe a system of publicly administered national health care. This system can range from programs in which the government runs hospitals and health organizations to programs in which there is national universal health care.*

Miller wrote:

Do you consider universal health care to be "socialized medicine", Miller?

We have "Universal Health Insurance" in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those individuals living above the poverty level, this plan is not "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".

For those living in POVERTY, their health plans are part of the
MEDICAID program and as such, are considered to be either
WELFARE or "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".

Old Euorpe; You often don't sound like an American. Are you
a citizen of the United States of America?

old europe wrote:

Do you consider universal health care to be "socialized medicine", Miller?

We have "Universal Health Insurance" in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those individuals living above the poverty level, this plan is not "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".

For those living in POVERTY, their health plans are part of the
MEDICAID program and as such, are considered to be either
WELFARE or "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".

Old Euorpe; You often don't sound like an American. Are you
a citizen of the United States of America?

McGentrix wrote:

Wikipedia can always be counted on to have a liberal slant.

As is Britannica:

Quote:

Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.

source:
"health insurance." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2 Aug. 2007 http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9039703.

History of the term
The term began as a pejorative phrase first popularized in 1920s and 1930s United States politics by conservative opponents of publicly operated health care, proposed during the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt and later championed by US Senator Spessard Holland of Florida, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and many more. Organizations that generally oppose expansion of government services still tend to use the phrase in that way.
However, others have pointed out that the US government already operates public health care. That approach to health care is provided by US Veterans Administration clinics and hospitals to former members of US military services.

Quite different, however, are socialized medicine and government medical-care programs. In these systems, which are usually financed from general tax revenues, doctors are employed, directly or indirectly, by a government agency, and hospitals and other health facilities are owned or operated by the government. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom and the hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans' Affairs in the United States are examples of such systems.

You said it was a pejorative phrase, but then in your second post saying something else... So which is it?