deathpoet's blog: "Daily Rant"

Given the current debate i the U.S. over health care coverage, the word Socialism is getting tossed around like beach ball at a lakeside picnic.  Unfortunatly, most of the people tossing the word have no more idea of what that word means than the average picnicer.  At best, most folks simply don't know the difference and misuse the word, at worst the word is being thrown as a red herring to scare the HELL out of people.

Capitalism: the means of production, (industry, business and such) is controlled by the owners, (those who have POWERFUL CAPITAL) Government can be an elected republic... but need not be.

Socialism: the means of production is controlled by the WORKERS not necessarily the government.  That is, that which produces the economy is controlled, possibly owned, by those that work there.   If the government controlled by the workers as well is a communism.

What the president is suggesting in the change of health care system, is making health care coverage a right and responsibility.  Will it cost more? Not really.  We already pay for those who have no health care whether by choice or circumstance.  Health insurance companies already build into your costs a fee to help pay for those who use services and have no means to pay, they have to, hospitals require participants to kick in.  Hospitals and providers also inflate their costs to you to pay for these folks as well.  Lastly, Medicaid is funded by tax dollars.   Therefore, we who have coverage are already getting billed 3 times for those without coverage.  Wouldn't getting billed 1 time be better?

A simple example of the why this is important: Consider a car accident.  Imagine if the driver who hit you had NO coverage.  Imagine if neither of you had coverage.  The plan makes sense because everyone is then covered.

For those who still say socialism, a true socialist system would work thusly. (and may be a better system yet)   All the workers at a particular place would collctively vote whether or not to join with other workers at the same or similar workers. Let's say McDonalds.  Each Mcdonald's workers would decide whether to join with other McDonalds or go at it alone.  Then that group, be it a single McDonald's or multiple McDonalds, would then go out and negotiate its insuarance coverage.  In this system EVERY working person would have coverage.  The government would then be responsible to cover non-working people.   It's actually a simple system.

For those who want to compare this to European systems, no comparison.   Remember this, we are the only democracy with no representation of labor in the government.   The department of Labor does not represent labor.  In every other democracy, the minister of LABOR is elected by workers to represent the needs of workers.   It is through this post that most of the health care rules and monies are generated.

I know, it's long, but food for thought

DP