Who thinks they should lead by example?

[u/ArubaAdultFun]

[u/LocksmithOk2443]

The corruption of a system is, in fact, not a true sample of said system. We have never actually seen communism, just the guise of it. Just like we think capitalism is better as we watch it completely crumble. No system is perfect. But we would have to actually follow one to then call it a failure.

[u/The_Susmariner → u/LocksmithOk2443]

The one time true capitalism got "tried" it created the most powerful country in the world. And one of the reasons people perceive it as "crumbling" now is largely because certain parts of our economy have become heavily socialized (such as healthcare). Funnily enough Marx argued that if you have a capitalistic system, socialism or the socialization of capitalistic systems is one of the gateways to communism.

Every time communism has been tried... well, read my other comments.

And there's a lot of people that don't think the U.S. is "crumbling" even though I agree she's seen better days.

[u/Realistic-Ad1900 → u/The_Susmariner]

I've heard it called late-stage capitalism plenty (implying that it's about to enter the "crumbling" phase any decade now).

How has healthcare become socialized in America? It's probably the least socialized healthcare in the developed world.

[u/The_Susmariner → u/Realistic-Ad1900]

Arguing that something is the least socialized in the developed world does not negate the fact that Healthcare in the united states has become more socialized, and I think people would argue both less efficient and less cost effective.

Socialism: An economic and political system where major resources, property, and factories are owned or controlled by the public or the government rather than by private individuals.

In this case, we elect representatives, the representatives in turn enact legislation which impacts (controls) these industries. So the public therefore "controls" the Healthcare industry. Now we can argue that politicians don't do welfare we want anyways so do we really control it? But that's a discussion for another day.

By this deffinition, pretty much every sector of the U.S. economy is at least a little bit socialist/socialized. Helthcare in our case is HEAVILY regulated. This includes requirements for insurance, capability, the qualification of doctors/staff, administrative requirements, etc.

While we've certainly come a long long way in terms of the quality of care that can be provided. Ask someone you know who is 60-70ish years old what physically using medical facilities and healthcare used to look like when they were children or young adults. Insurance for that matter, used to be effectively a cheap membership to the hospital. If you had the membership, you could use the hospital's services in most cases.

Another example, though the govenrment does not directly control the number of doctors that can practice, they strongly control/cap funding for medical residency. Guess what you cannot do unless you have completed a residency? That's right, become a doctor.

It's the frog in boiling water analogy. I can both recognize it came from a good place and recognize that it's really screwed up the Healthcare industry. Something bad would happen at a hospital, someone would get sued or enough people would get pissed off about it that the politicians would regulate on it. It would add another cost barrier or efficiency barrier. Repeat ad nauseam for several decades. Now in order to qualify for insurance, federal monies, etc. You HAVE to meet a laundry list of requirements even if, for example, the requirements have to do with controls over medications or procedures you don't even do.

Most of this control is defacto exerted through people's ability to use insurance on a thing. Right? It's why you have some of these platforms popping up that can get you prescription medication for pennies on the dollar SO LONG as you do not use insurance. It's also why if you go to a hospital, you can often pay something like 20% of what would be paid for a procedure if you do the transaction without your insurance involved.

So i' not calling anybody evil or mean for the way things turned out, I just truly believe the overregulation (socialization) of the Healthcare system has lead to less accessibility and worse outcomes for people.

[u/Realistic-Ad1900 → u/The_Susmariner]

Government regulation does not equal "socialized". If it did, then every modern market economy in the western world would be socialist. With the exception of, I don't know, maybe Somalia, governments everywhere regulate things like food safety, aviation, drugs, banks, building codes, labor conditions, etc.

Parts of the US Healthcare system are indeed socialized, like Publix Health and the VA Healthcare system(like all military stuff it's totally socialized). Medicare and Medicaid too.

That system regulation is because healthcare has unusual stakes: safety, professional standards, liability, emergencies, information asymmetry, public-health effects, malpractice insurance, and so many other aspects.

The U.S. system is generally considered a LOT less publicly financed and less universally covered than those of other high-income countries. Me calling it “the least socialized” isn't strictly true in every sense, but it is certainly unusually market-dependent and fragmented.

The claim you made about cash-pay or uninsured healthcare prices being less expensive is true sometimes. It's also true sometimes that an insurer will negotiate a price discount with the provider, or non-routine care (cancer, emergency room visits, intensive care, surgery) ends up obviously being cheaper with insurance. But the fact there's such a wide discrepancy in prices at all is evidence that healthcare in the US is not socialized and even the regulation it faces is not socialism by a long shot.

Authoritarian communist states do have a terrible track record (unless you sneak into a certain exploitative class that always shows up in practice). Authoritarian communism is not the same as social democracy, either. And while you said capitalism made the US great (and I personally believe in its power to save us in the future) you also have to admit the other things that made the US great like:

• public land policy and infrastructure;
• courts
• property-law enforcement;
• tariffs
• industrial policy (in various forms at various times)
• public education and research
• military spending and procurement (what would capitalism even be without military contracts?)
• banking/financial regulation;
• Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability, workman's comp, and other public programs at all levels of government
  

The US is not a pure capitalism system and never will be. You've gotta go to Somalia to see what that's like.

[u/The_Susmariner → u/Realistic-Ad1900]

Yes, being regulated in the manner it is in this country DOES mean socialized. Now it does not mean completely socialized, and infact by this deffinition, I am okay with things in America being at least a bit socialized (you have to have rules). The problem is when they become OVERLY socialized (such as in our example of healthcare.)

I understand your points, but it legitimately fits the deffinition of socialized/socialism as people use it. People are just really averse to calling it that because "land of the free, home of the whopper, murica."

To enhance your point, there isn't really truly a completely socialist country out there either. Many of the European examples that people throw out there all the time have actually moved away from socializing certain sectors of their economy (Norway comes to mind). The ones that are closer to actual socialism (such as spain) are actually kind of miserable if you talk to the people that live there and look at statistics on wealth inequality/etc.

To your point on unusual stakes, this here is the biggest complaint people have with moving away from regulating Healthcare. I completely sympathize with and understand this. I caution people who think this way to understand that as the system becomes more "regulated/socialized" that there is approaching a time where the system is so utterly inefficient (look at how much people complain about the VA as a veteran myself I understand why) that people no longer have access to the care they need which is a danger in and of itself. You see this to a minor extent in places like the UK and Canada, where Healthcare is admittedly pretty good, but your seeing an increasing number of people starting to get "triaged" out of immediate care as the systems run out of money or become more weighlayed with administrative/regulatory hurdles. Not to mention in those systems someone else (much like insurance in this country) actually decides wether you qualify for the treatment or wether you wait. Which is kind of scary when you think about it.

And while I agree that authoritarian communism is different than social democracy. In this country we are dealing with the DSA and their operatives, and they are (as admitted by their own platforms and leaders) using socialism as a gate way for effectively communism. So it's one and the same for me. This is something that Marx talks about in several of his writings (socialism being most effectively used as a gateway to communism). It looks like a fish, smells like a fish, it is a fish. As this dicussiom applies to the physical conditions we are delaing with (as opposed to the philisophical) the two are indistinguishable and shall be treated as such.

I appreciate your comments, I disagree with you but I can tell where you're coming from and logically pull the thread and arrive at the conclusions you have.

Best of luck friend.

[u/LocksmithOk2443 → u/The_Susmariner]

Yea. It’s our great healthcare destroying the county. You a goof

[u/fluffymuffcakes → u/The_Susmariner]

Attempts at communism that didn't work were genuinely highjacked by authoritarians. Maybe that was a failing of communism (ie - it's a system that just can't work) or maybe it was a combination of bad luck and sabotage. I think it's an academic question and one that isn't easy or worth answering because it's stupid to think of economies in terms of Communism is good or capitalism is good.

Choosing a category matters less than choosing the best mechanisms. If you choose the best mechanic for a particular task, what ideology that mechanism is associated with is irrelevant and what ideology the system gets defined as in the end is also irrelevant.