Part I: Access

So, Obamacare is upon us, like it or not.

Why we just can't just have a single payer system, the only real system that makes any kind of sense, is beyond me. Well, not beyond me, I do understand that we live in a country where free market fundamentalist millionaires make all of the decisions and where any kind of logical, efficient centralization that might benefit the working class is a dirty word that makes conservatives hiss “that’s sssssssocialism!"

There's only one problem with this criticism. Obamacare is not socialism.  It’s corporate welfare, a handout to the insurance industry that may incidentally do some good for the average working person, but it's not socialism in any way.

That being said, I personally believe that socialism is the only sensible way to run a health care system, morally and economically. You can bitch about rationing if you want, but rationing is already the name of the game: some people have it and some people don’t. You can bitch about being told what to do by a higher authority, but you don't elect the CEO of an insurance company and you do elect the members of the government. You can bitch about choice, but in a socialized system all reasonable care is covered and all doctors are participating providers, so a patient has more choice. You can bitch about compensation, but in a socialized system doctors wouldn't have to buy malpractice insurance and could spend most of their time practicing their profession and less of their time fooling around with insurance companies. You can bitch about cost but a centralized system can be run cheaper and more efficiently. The list goes on.

Look, there is no perfect system, but health care is a basic need and a little more complicated than buying toothpaste, though if you have tried to buy toothpaste lately, that's getting pretty complicated as well. Socialize the hell out of it, I say. Just one kind of toothpaste that works is fine with me.

You see, I’m the socialist that your mother Anne Coulter and your daddy Glenn Beck warned you about.* I am not one of those crazy racist national socialists who worship Hitler, but a democratic socialist. In my interpretation this essentially means that I think that some things (basic needs) should be centrally managed by a democratically elected government that is transparent and actually concerns itself with the welfare of the people. By "the people" I mean the average people, the working people, the producers, the people who are not in control of the system and in fact pretty much get screwed by it and therefore require representation.

It's not that I think the government we have now is all of these things, but that is another issue for another day. It's not that I think everybody should dress the same way or even make the same income. It's not that I don't think people should take responsibility for their actions and it's not that I don't love liberty. However, the free market is not the answer to everything and it’s definitely not the answer to health care. If a guy is having a heart attack and he can't get to the hospital for treatment because he can't afford it, more likely because he works his tail off and doesn't get paid enough, not because he is a lazy bum, this is NOT liberty. However, even if the guy is a bum and his heart attack was his own fault because it was ultimately caused by eating too many cheeseburgers, I'm still not willing to tell his kid or his mother or his spouse or his best friend, "sorry, health care is a privilege, not a right", though I have to admit that my evil vegetarian brain does think that in this case the cows are getting their just revenge.

Are you going to tell a marathon runner that because her bad knee was caused by too much marathon running that it's her own fault and therefore she should just suffer the consequences and not get surgery? Find me one person who lives perfectly and dies without ever having a health issue. Even this person has at least one relative with congestive heart failure or a thyroid problem.

Anyone can go around shouting “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!” and it sounds really good until one starts to actually think it through. Then one realizes that liberty becomes more complicated when there is more than one person involved, and the last time I looked there were several of us human being types stumbling around aimlessly on this planet.

There are always conflicting needs and conflicting values. There is freedom from and freedom to. There is the consideration that my liberty ends where yours begins. Laws and regulations are necessary unless one wants to live in a world run exclusively by bullies. You may have the right to drive a hummer, but I also have a right not to contract cancer from breathing your exhaust. You see how that works? It’s called civilization.

* Please, Anne, Glenn. Don't reproduce together.