The “Obamacare is socialized medicine” chants are going around Twitter and Facebook again. The 33rd House vote to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a symbolic gesture costing taxpayers $6 million.
With the House spending $50 million over two years to repeal a law called “socialized medicine” by the GOP, it’s time to explain the difference between socialized medicine and Obamacare.
After the Supreme Court ruling last month, Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with outraged Americans, primarily Tea Partiers and Conservative voters, threatening to move to Canada to avoid socialized medicine. It’s now a running joke about these voters.
To help these voters out, we will break down all the components required for socialized medicine and compare them to Obamacare.
To be socialized medicine, a health care plan requires:
- Tax dollars collected from all citizens to pay for health care.
- Most hospitals and clinics are government buildings.
- Most doctors, nurses, and administrators are government employees.
- Every citizen has access to health care provided by the state.
- Health care costs are lower as malpractice insurance premiums and pay-for-service schemes are eliminated.
Compare this to Obamacare. Obamacare is:
- Private citizens purchasing private health insurance from private companies.
- Hospitals and clinics are run for-profit by private companies.
- Doctors, nurses, and administrators are private citizens paid wages by a corporate entity.
- Citizens have access private health insurance and funds to pay for private health insurance from the free-market.
- Health care costs are lowered through more people paying into health insurance market system.
Obamacare sets up a system where American citizens enter into a health care market setup very similarly to auto insurance or life insurance markets. The health insurance you purchase and maintain is your choice. You pick and choose what covers you and with which company.
Obamacare is the free-market, personal responsibility, remove the freeloaders plan for health care.
Socialized medicine is the government assumes the costs of care for all citizens, focuses on preventative and curative medicine, costs less than American health care, and provides better service.
If Obamacare was truly socialized medicine, it would have contained a single-payer system. It doesn’t.
Medicare, Medicaid, and VA hospitals are all socialized. The government pays the bill for the patients. Each of these programs are extremely popular. The VA hospital costs less per patient than the free-market alternatives. It always makes me groan when I see veterans and the elderly protesting socialized health care while having socialized health care.
If the American health care system was so amazing, other nations would use the American model. Taiwan, the most recent nation to redesign their health care system, stated the American health care system is a great example of how not to provide care to their citizens.
For fun, the Republican alternative is if you currently have health insurance, the people using the emergency room which cannot be denied care drive up your health care costs. If you don’t have health insurance, then don’t get sick. If you do get sick, be sure to die quickly so you don’t drive up Mitt Romney’s health insurance premiums.
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