On "Socialized Medicine"

[Jerry442]

Imagine a health care system where, when you have a medical problem, you contact a government-run agency which, without asking you, will assign to you medical personnel from a pool of government employees. When they treat you, they will decide the course of treatment. Your only recourse is to refuse treatment entirely. The medical people even wear government-issued uniforms. Sound like a Hell-scape of socialized medicine to you?

Then don't ever call 911.

[Stargazer99]

1. It sounds like a hellva lot better than NO CARE at all

Or so damn expensive you go into bankruptcy

[Half-Century Man]

2. Imagine a Health care system where if you have a medical problem...

...they do a credit check and consider treating you based on how many assets you can liquidate quickly. You contact the overpaid bean counting trolls who used to live under the bridge, but now live in mansions. Who decide which brand of $146.89 pill to test...er treat you with (don't mind the side effects, blurred vision, loose stools, uncontrollable drooling, cancer, Tourettes syndrome, your finances having a size 14 asshole, etc). And those picking whether or not you get treated were $2000.00 suits and hate poor people.
Sound familiar?

[polly7]

3. I realize you're talking about being treated by EMS,

but physicians and specialists in socialized health care in most countries have their own private practices and the 'government' is responsible for dispersing funding and providing hospital and medical facilities, they have no input into treatment, and physicians act only with your full knowledge and consent. We're entitled to get as many opinions and tests as we feel we need before deciding on anything. Your scenario might be accurate in Cuba, but I'd still prefer it to not being able to afford treatment at all.

[Jerry442]

4. My point was, which I might have failed to make, is that the EMS system...

...is pretty much "socialized health care" (albeit a specialized facet of it) , but most people accept it without getting hysterical because they just don't think about it as such. Just like they don't have conniption fits about "socialized airports" or "socialized city streets" or "socialized law enforcement." People need to open their eyes and look around them and see what government can and does do pretty well.