To Socialize or Not to Socialize...

Given some of the responses I have received, I suppose a clarification of my position in this post on healthcare is in order. The post would suggest that I favor socialized medicine. In some limited way, I suppose I do. Allow me to explain. Read this post from 1999. It involves a problem with hospitals delaying emergency medical care to patients until their insurance information is verified. A 1986 law prohibits hospitals from rejecting or ''dumping'' patients who request care in emergency rooms and also prohibits them from delaying care to check on insurance coverage...In May (1999), President Clinton reprimanded Ravenswood Hospital in Chicago, saying it had allowed a 15-year-old boy to die of gunshot wounds outside its doors. In a for-profit hospital, the desire to not treat the un-insured is understandable, even if not acceptable. Given the 1986 law referenced here, we already have some form of socialized medicine. My vision of "socialized" medicine includes 2 things - emergency visits and regular physical check-ups. Emergency visits are something that I believe is essential that all people can access when necessary. Far from being open to medical interpretation, these instances involve saving lives. The life of a wealthy, insured businessman is not inherently more valuable than the life of a poor, uninsured laborer. I don't think that there would be much argument against this, except as an acedemic exercise pitting the future of medical advancement against the needs of a few underlings. Many opponents of socialized medicine will not even acknowledge that there are many millions of uninsured people in the US - perhaps they think that to be uninsured is to be unimportant. Physical check-ups help to prevent many medical conditions that are both expensive to the individual and detrimental to the community. As these checkups are not particularly expensive or time consuming (when compared to other types of medical care), this small expense will help to prevent the debate over the treatment of serious medical conditions that have been allowed to develop due to a lack of preventative care. For other medical procedures, the "entitlement" becomes much more cloudy. If the condition is not life-threatening (a distinction that carries its own complications), the requirement for treatment is vastly reduced. Do we then foist the cost for these procedures onto the populace? I think not. Orthodontic work and other types of non-essential surgeries can be performed at the availability of funding from the patient. Once we have eliminated life threatening situations and given a modest attempt at preventative care through regular physicals and check-ups, we can split hairs at how much further the "socialization" of medicine should go. To do less than emergency care and regular physicals makes the uninsured seem as though they are somewhat less than fully a member of our society - to our great moral detriment.