We already have a national health system, only a highly disorganized one. No public hospital may turn away a sick person for inability to pay, especially a sick child. In fact, the inability of some poorer people to access preventive and maintenance care costs us enormously when these people later show up at our county hospitals, bereft of funds, and needing diabetic amputations, heart by-passes, and other treatments for illnesses that grew chronic in the absence of regular care.
Not to mention the fact that universal health care is essential to the health of everyone, as we saw in the early part of the last century when we had lovely epidemics of tuberculosis, typhus, influenza, and polio. Every child should get basic inoculations, if nothing else.
So, no, I do not agree that national health care equals socialism. We provide it already one way or another, and we might as well do it in a comprehensive way, rather than the haphazard enormous costs that we pick up for the chronic sick that eventual show up at public hospitals, far past an easy cure. |
