The fundamental achievement of capitalism is individual autonomy and promotion of individual achievement. United States Americans pride themselves on individual accomplishments that are devoid of reception of hand outs. The notion of socialism in the United States is best summed up by F.A. Hayek, “socialism strips man of his desire for success.” Also with socialism, the unalienable rights of liberty and justice are violated. This thinking has been ingrained in the minds of US citizens and anything that even remotely resembles socialism is considered “un-American” or “not Patriotic”. I mean, nobody wants to be un-patriotic right? The very idea of universal health care sends shutters down many spines of those who believe everything can and must only be obtained by an individuals own effort. Calling universal health care socialism continues to be an effective argument against guaranteeing access to care for all in the US because many feel that it would be rewarding those who do not work hard enough to obtain it.
Many argue that it would be unfair to those who earn what they gain because there will be many who take advantage of a universal health care system and abuse their new found liberties. For some reason, the idea of helping your neighbor just doesn’t seem so great when it comes to health care. Here in the US, we somehow fail to see that healthcare for all is a basic human right and not part of a “socialist conspiracy” to destroy our democracy. We already have other institutions in America that are socialist in nature, why not make health care one to?
Although some of the health systems in other countries may fall under the term “socialized medicine”, they are not truly socialist health systems by definition. There are not because they also offer other means of obtaining health care through the private sector if one chooses to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85RAeyYNPc
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