Question by : What is your opinion about socialized healthcare?
I’m American and have private healthcare, but I’m also a Canadian so I can repatriate myself and use socialized healthcare if I moved back. Which do you prefer? Thank you.

Best answer:

Answer by brainlessbandit
I prefer private healthcare.

I don’t want the government breathing down my surgeon’s back while he’s operating. That’s just disgusting.

Answer by Domenico
I’m Italian native living in Italy and in my country there is currently universal (or socialized) healthcare. It works very well: indeed we are 2nd in an UN list of best health care by country.
In Italy, you have only to pay the “ticket” for hospitalization (usually 15 or 20 €) but if you’re poor or you are hospitalized after an Emergency Room treatment, it’s completely free. After this, everything will be paid by the SSN (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, National Health Care Service). If you’re not EU citizen, you have to pay part of the cures (there is a maximum) but usually most non-EU citizen are poor immigrants who enters in the “free” category, so their cures are free, too.
Anyway, emergency room and after-emergency room cures are always completely free.

All this is stated by Italian Republic Constitution (Art. 32): “La Repubblica tutela la salute come fondamentale diritto dell’individuo […]”. This roughly means: “The Republic protects health as a fundamental right of the person […]”.

My opinion about socialized healthcare is that welfare state is a very good thing. What you pay for health insurance, I pay for my taxes, with the differences that SSN will never search for “pre-existing conditions”, “not pre-approved treatments”, “hidden diseases” or something just for avoiding paying for you.

So yes, I’d like very much to see universal healthcare in USA, too. I mean, you are enough wealthy to afford it and lucky you, but what about the 50 millions americans that can’t? How can you let them die? What about all the people left alone by HMOs just because they are not valuable? Haven’t you see SiCKO of Michael Moore? It left me very disappointed.

Now, pros/cons:
Pros:
1) Healthcare becomes a right, and not a market.
2) You have the right to every cure you may need, absolutely for free.
3) Your drugs are almost free. This means that you don’t have to pay 2000 $ a year for heart drugs, but only 10 €.
4) Healthcare is in the hands of government, which purpose is not profit but the health of its countrymen. This means that they don’t take a part of your money for profit: so, with equal treatments, you pay less in taxes that in Health Insurance.
5) You can plan your future with calm. You know there is the state that will help you if you (for any reason) can’t. I mean, let’s take cancer like exemple: in Italy you are fully covered (you are considered un-able at 100%) so after you heal, you can re-start again. In USA, probably after 2 months of treatments your insurance will end its copays, and you’ll have to pay to receive treatments, you’ll make debts over debts, you’ll sell your car, house… even if you heal, your life is forever lost.

Cons:
1) Appointment lists. If you ask an appointment for a non-essential problem (aestethic problems, minor problems), you have to wait a little. Usually, not more than 2 months, but times changes a lot. If you need instead cures, you just get a prescription from your doctor and get a visit in the hospital in 2 days. Last exemple: if you need emergency cures, there isn’t any problem: just call 118 and the ambulance will take you without checking your billfold.
2) Egoists won’t like paying for other. Luckily, in Italy we have left behind this mindset: “I earn my right, earn yours!”.
3) Medical research needs money, so the state has to pay for R&D, too. In Italy this point is particularly hot: our current Prime Minister, mr. Silvio Berlusconi, decided to cut the research funds to pay new F-35s fighters. How I miss the old times where “Let’s cut to the military, we are a pacific country, after all!” was the first option.
4) Unlike France, in Italy home services are not granted, though usually every ASL manges to somehow find an association that provides them. This was the main reason of those who abolished mandatory military service. Most young men ended up doing the alternative civilian service as nurses, home aids, or just workers in hospitals (a colonel told: “Most people nowadays prefer to clean bathrooms in a hospital rather than doing two guards a month”).

It’s a proportion matter: you pay in proportion of what you earn and you are given in proportion of what you need.
It’s not capitalism: it’s democracy.

Ciao ciao!

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