I am not so sure. Those who have not worked in healthcare .are perhaps less aware of the instrinsically political decisions taken daily by doctors. For example, good health care might dictate that the patient rests, but managers are judged by the rate at which their underlings take sick leave. The resulting conflict plays out in the doctor´s office. There are many examples of this kind of thing, and it is inevitable.

The academic mind often makes the error of assuming that because things can be needly categorised they are indeed so. A socialist health system cannot exist outside of a socialist society. Whether either is a desirable thing is of course open to debate, but one thing is sure: the Americans could certainly look harder abroad, for their own ¨system¨ is lamentably broken on so many objective indices.

The AMA and the AHA mounted their campaign to name anything new in health care as “Socialized Medicine; and it was amplified by the McCarthy ascendancy and red scare of the early 50s.

That we have spent sixty years with the witless sobriquet of Socialized Medicine attached to any change is long-overdue for a counter-assault.

I suggest we abandon all talk of “reform of the health care system”. This is easily done, since there is NOTHING about what we have that can be accurately described as SYSTEMIC.

Time to rebut every accusation of socialism by an insistence that it is time for Democratized Medicine.

I’m a man of the right who is barely tolerated here, and I would be very interested if you would flesh out your alarm at my proposal. I am of the opinion that at a certain stage of development unions do a great service to a nation by raising overall wages enabling consumers to purchase more and thereby growing the over-all national GDP. This was Henry Ford’s secret who, although he despised and broke unions and union strikes, nonetheless unilaterally raised the worker’s wages and shortened the work week (and effectively achieving many of labor’s goals) realizing that vast numbers would thereby have the wherewithall and time to buy and drive his cars.

Do you feel that unions will simply make whatever country you live in non-competitive, and thus result in an absolute loss of jobs as business/industry flees to as of yet unionized realms? Or do you have other concerns?

No, please, leave us alone!

I also second your comments about unions. Strangely to some, this “man of the right” feels that the only thing that will ever restore even a sembelance of a level-playing field world-wide is the presence of a healthy union movement in developing countries as well as the industrialized ones. (The Wobblies were premature!)

In fact, US union leaders would do their members the most good by taking union dues and using them to fight for unions in foreign countries. However I realize they fear charges of not directly helping their domestic membership and are thus loath to do so—but if properly explained I feel it could be done. No amount of union organizing in the US will keep a single American job safe as long as there is a Bolivian tin miner left alive willing to leap at the chance to double his dollar/day salary (exaggeration for emphasis) assemble washing-machines for Whirlpool.

In the best academic tradition, there is hardly anything you write that I wholly agree with, let alone even weakly endorse. However I would not find a single word in your comment@26 to disagree with.

I should add that GE, no bleeding-heart charitable institution, when it surveyed the entire insurance industry to find the best company to fund it’s key employee deferred compensation agreements , did so by choosing cash value contracts from NW Mutual—and so openly noted in it’s proxy statements.

You are quite right about the disappearance/conversion to stock companies of this nation’s mutual insurance companies. Perhaps the preeminent standout example of a company resisting this unfortunate trend, and an exemplar of the best in that original concept is the Northwestern Mutual Ins. Co, Milwaukee, Wisc. An examination of the fine print of it’s policy provisions will find that almost all advantages (in terms of provisions for legal disputes, definitions, etc.) go to the policy-holder and not the company, in the best traditions of the “mutual concept—a rare example in these days. (They even have a policy-holder advisory committee to recommend improvements in policy provisions) Their cash-value policies are almost always #1 or within the top three in terms of rate of return for policy-holders. A very fine and ethical company. (And no I do not work for them, nor, for various reasons, am I insured with them—but would not hesitate to). That the trend has been away from the Mutual Ins. concept to conversion to stock companies where the interests of the stock-holders, not the policy owners are paramount, is a very unfortunate trend.

By the way, are you European? In 34 you seem to have an odd view of Europe: whilst it is certainly the case that there is on average more social security than in the US, it’s odd to see this as anything else than a difference in gradation. Isn’t the US economy a mixed economy? The third way is, by the way, just a little game socialists played here, in Old Europe, whereby the elite of the socialist parties adopted neoliberal policies – & specifically low tax policies – in an attempt to get elected given socialism was – and still is to a large extent if the electoral voting is a measure – dramatically unpopular.

If anything, the young European has proven to be very conservative of late (one might be tempted to temper the Obtimism here: young Americans are closer to Europe for an accidental reason: Europe has become much more American since Reagan).

But I am over my head and out of my league.

I can’t say I really understand it or have counterarguments, but my first impression was this will level out say the bottom four quintiles and leave the top in charge. IOW, the poorest will be bbetter off at the expense of the upper-middle class (VAT taxes), and the rich will get richer.

As I said above, a social democracy that will leave the Fricks and Pullmans secure & content.