I believe there are two main reasons for why socialism continues to be an effective argument against universal healthcare. One is that due to the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the plethora of failed communist regimes, the American public is still adverse to anything “Red”. I think to the average person “socialism” is synonymous with “communism” and therefore it is part of an evil form of policy and government that should be avoided at all costs. The second, related reason is that we have a history of being fiercely individualistic as a nation. As Ramon mentioned, we almost have a Pavlovian reaction to immediately and vehemently reject the idea of egalitarianism. Also, we can refer back to the bootstraps discussion from last week. There is the enduring feeling in this country that “social safety nets” are coddling those who do not have the discipline/ambition/strength to pull themselves up.
I think in order to ever achieve universal healthcare the distinction must be made between the tenets of socialism and those of communism. One of the best explanations I have come across is that socialism is typically economic-based, whereas Communism is both economic and political. Socialists generally feel that Capitalism and Socialism are not mutually exclusive. A capitalistic society can benefit by adopting socialist aspects in order to mitigate the exploitation and inequity inherent in Capitalism. Another difference is that Socialism bases the extent of distribution on an individual’s effort, whereas Communism distributes goods and services based on each person’s needs, regardless of effort.
I feel that it would be nearly impossible to actually find truly unadulterated socialism, so I could not seem to find any “true” socialist healthcare systems in Europe. However, as Ara mentioned, the Swiss do seem to be a good example. I did come across an article that presents one perspective as to how a true socialist healthcare system might look. Below is a direct link to the full-text PDF version of the article.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j36vn7503m206892/fulltext.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment