The Dish: Andrew Sullivan- 'Healthcare Socialism 1, Healthcare Capitalism 0'

Source:The Dish- Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, with a lot at American health care.

"The Commonwealth Fund quietly eviscerates America’s medical system with some basic facts. Two of the more remarkable ones:

In 2013, more than one-third (37%) of U.S. adults went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when they were sick, or failed to fill prescriptions because of costs, compared with as few as 4 percent to 6 percent in the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Roughly 40 percent of both insured and uninsured U.S. respondents spent $1,000 or more out-of-pocket during the year on medical care, not counting premiums. High deductibles and cost-sharing, along with no limits on out-of-pocket costs, may explain why even insured people in the U.S. struggled to afford needed health care, the researchers said." 

From The Dish

This idea that capitalism is better when it comes to producing things that people want, but socialism is better for things that people need to live well, in other words capitalism is better for producing luxury cars, cell phones, computers (to use as examples) but a state-owned socialist system for producing things that people need to live well, take health care and health insurance (to use as examples) well, you don’t see at least in America a lot of people calling for nationalizing the food industry. 

Agriculture, grocery stores, restaurants, we all need food, right. You don’t see a lot of people in America calling for nationalizing the energy industry, only the Far-Left wants to nationalize energy. And we all need and use energy to get around and keep our homes warm and cool. 

You don’t see a lot of people calling for nationalizing banking in this country, again, only the Far-Left. We all use and need to use banks, because it is still the safest place to keep our money and we’ve all borrowed money before because we needed to that as well.

Where government comes in is to do the things that we need it to do that it is best qualified to do. And in some cases the only ones qualified to do. Like foreign policy, law enforcement, prisons, homeland security, central intelligence, regulating the markets and collecting the taxes to pay for the government that we need. 

Germany the largest country in Europe (unless you include Russia) and the largest economy in Europe and fourth largest economy in the world. This is a perfect example of a country that has shown you don’t need government-run health care and health insurance to have an affordable and quality health care system.

Germany has private health insurance from cradle to grave. Their hospitals and clinics are private as well, but what they do well unlike America at least yet is properly regulate their private health care system. So their people aren’t abused by their health care providers. And every German is required to cover their own health care costs and not able to pass those costs on to others. Things that America has just started doing and their health costs are half that of the United States.

I’m tired of hearing these bogus (Happy Holidays) arguments that the rest of the developed world has government-run health care which is why America should do the same thing. Or government is automatically better at delivering health care and health insurance than the private sector. 

Germany, France and Japan are perfect examples of countries that do not try to do everything for their people through government. Including health care and they all have better health care systems than the United States. At least when it comes to paying for their health care. 

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