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connyosis: There's nothing wrong, in theory, with a socialized medical system. It would work to bring health care to everyone, undoubtedly. The problem with a mandated, socialized helath care system is that it disqualifies excellence in favor of inclusion. For instance, lets say you know an oncologist, who's really good at getting tumors. In a free enterprise system, that doctor can rise to emminience, garner money for research, develop new treatments, or guide the health care market to better treat people. Unfortunately, the cost of that treatment is higher, but that's because that doctor's better. It's the same reason a Porsche is more expensive than a Ford. One is hand made in Stuttgart by expert craftsmen, one's mass made in Detroit by assembly line workers.
Under a socialized system, that same oncologist wouldn't be able to excell, since the dictates of what that docutor could and couldn't do would be mandated by the governing body that ran the health department for the country. If they tried anything out of mandate, they'd be brought up on charges, fined, and probably fired for doing what was right, as opposed to what was mandated by the federally approved treatment plan.
The best thing you can hope for, in a perfect world, is a sort of split between the two. On the one hand, you have the federally subsidzed health care, that takes care of everyone, and on the other hand, you have the private practice, that allows for the innovations to improve the first system in the long run. But every time I read what I just wrote there, I keep coming back to the phrase "tying to have your cake and eat it too", so I don't know if any health care system can survive like that. That, and, as a semi-professional cynic, I've seen too many people try and abuse help when it was offered to them to think that you could expect everyone to use the system properly.
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