Socialized Vs. Private Health Care

As of 2010, the debate over health care shows no signs of abating. In general, there are two camps in the health-care debate: the free-market view that holds that state regulations are driving up the price of health care, and the socialized view, which holds that only the state has the ability to guarantee affordable health care to all residents.

Socialized Health Care

• Socialized health care refers to a system in which the state offers health care plans at a cost below market rates. The idea is that the state should take over health-care administration and offer plans at a very low cost or simply pay premiums outright.This makes care affordable for all citizens and releases the private sector from its role in health care. The basic argument is that health care is simply too expensive and that health insurance plans are increasing in price at an alarming rate.

Private Health Care

• The free-market solution to the health-care crisis is to remove government from regulating insurance firms, doctors or hospitals. The market will force insurers to offer plans that most could afford or else few could buy them. For the state to control the price of health care is to eliminate access. Many doctors, as of 2010, will not take Medicare patients since the state forces very low prices on them. As an example, Professor Walter Williams, chairman of the Economics department at George Mason University, reports that the average wait for surgery in Britain is about a year. This is because, he says, when prices are kept artificially low, shortages develop because there is no incentive to produce.

Argument for Private Care

• Williams holds that it is government regulation of doctors, drug firms and hospitals that has driven up the price of health care. His basic argument against socialized medicine is that if the market is given free rein to allocate care options, people will discipline their use of it, and, in addition, many different packages of health care will be available for affordable prices. In other words, if the free market were to control health care -- which it does not, he says -- then the firms that offer affordable plans will be the profitable ones. The profit motive will force insurance firms to offer low cost, comprehensive plans, is the free-market argument.

Argument for Socialized Care

• The case for this revolves around the huge number of uninsured, which Harvard School of Public Health writer Katherine Schwartz holds has doubled over the last 25 years. A tightly centralized system can cut down on red tape while corporations are off the hook; they no longer need to pay directly for health plans. She worries that corporations are hiring more contract workers precisely so as not to have to pay benefits. Only the state, therefore, should be permitted to issue health insurance.