I think it's a bit more complicated than that, because in most socialized medicine systems, the suppliers are not owned by the government, so there's a lot of private industry billing (pharmaceuticals, medical devices and implants. etc.)
It's comparable to the USA's freeway system - yes the roads are publicly owned, but road repairs and material procurement are contracted out to private industry, and there's always the possibility of things like a government employee getting a kickback from a construction company for signing off on unnecessary work requests, etc.
A great deal of service provision in many countries' systems is private. Even here in Canada, "socialist" medicine often boils down to a private clinic billing the public insurer. Though the major hospitals are usually owned and operated by non-profit corporations, or the local government.
Most countries that have socialized healthcare still have private providers - the government is paying for healthcare, but they're taking on the role of the insurance provider rather than the healthcare provider.
"Socialised healthcare" is a system where a public institution puts capital to take care of a patient by using private-made products and services. i.e. the needles, IT systems, ambulances, drugs, etc, the public system is a platform, but not an industry.
Let the market be free, private companies are better at solving real problems. If the price of a drug is expensive (i) a public health system will take care of it, and (ii) new players will want a slice of that expensive drug by making one better and cheaper. This is my point. Governments are not good at making realiable and quality products and services.
For the sake of clarity I think reserving the term socialized medicine for situations where the government is the one providing service such as in the UK and not when the government is providing funding such as Canada. There is also universal healthcare systems like Singapore that still provide a strong private component.
How about all those heavy haulers who pay for your usage of the roads?
Most countries have 'socialised roads' and 'socialised healthcare, but the US sees 'socialised roads' as something good but 'socialised healthcare' as something bad. Whereas most other countries, even the so-called 'poor' countries can afford their single-payer 'socialised healhcare', the US finds that too difficult.
I have seen estimates that as much as two thirds of healthcare spending actually traces back to the govt when you count subsidies too. It is a mostly-socialized system at this point.
And of course even where the govt is not funding the product, they are stipulating in detail what it must include. E.g. insurance must include a long list of things from mental health care to nicotine patches, forcing people to go through their insurance rather than through a market where they would negotiate prices.
That is just question of definition of 'socialized medicine' term. Many universal healthcare systems in Europe are based on public/government insurance, and mixed private and public healthcare providers.
The issue is more complicated than just socialized vs. non-socialized. There are many countries with privately run healthcare system that are perfectly good, such as France or Switzerland. And there are countries that combine both public and private provision of healthcare and have it work perfectly well, such as Sweden or Singapore[1]. The US actually does run some hospitals directly, the VA, and I doubt this made the news outside of the US but there was a huge scandal a while ago concerning them.
The current US health situation is the end result of a long process of complicated schemes to provide more healthcare to Americans without any clearly visible costs in ways complicated enough that there are no obvious deficiencies. For instance Nixon's scheme[2] to lower costs by preventing competitions between hospitals[3] is still on the books all these years later. Given all the government interventions in the healthcare market combined with an unwillingness to bite the bullet pay for or subsidize most people's insurance directly has left the US with a healthcare system that is neither government run nor free market, but something far inferior to both.
[1] Singapore has a really weird combination of forced savings, mostly private payment, and mostly public provision which is really weird compared to everyone else but somehow gives them really good health outcomes really cheaply. I don't think the US could make that system work, though.
[2] Is there something Nixon didn't screw up? Well, besides repairing our relationship with China.
[3] Back in the day everybody knew that the USSR had a far more efficient economy than the US did (the Soviet statistics said so!), and one way people explained this was that the Soviets weren't wasting resources on competition but instead just figured out the best way to do something and put all their effort behind that.
I tend to think that socialized medicine is a great cost hedge for the individual citizen (ie even in Scandinavia we do pay for health care, so it's not 100% free like some people believe, but the cost is predictable and it can't ever get sky-high like in the US).
I think one downside to it is that it's hard to do anything out of the ordinary (ie some new drug or method or whatever) because health care is seen as a standardized gov't service. For customization, you still need privatized medicine.
Or am I wrong on this? I don't have a lot of insight into the health care system, honestly.
This is a huge problem in the US. Tax-payers are subsidizing a lot of medical advances, then the US government gives it to the private sector, privatizing whatever medical advances were paid by tax-dollars.
Socialism seems to create a lot of markets for the Capitalist private sector.
They are, but their health care systems are everywhere on the scale from textbook socialism to capitalism-with-lots-of-rules. The UK's NHS, for example, employs the doctors, paid out of general government revenue, and provides otherwise-free health care.
In that it is not managed by the government. I don't have a problem with that (I myself live in a country with socialized medicine), but it seems that a lot of people in the USA don't like the government meddling into some of their business.
I've lived in countries that have socialized medicine and ones without and my experience was dramatically different. I was always taught that socialized medicine was better. However I never got half decent care until I bought private health insurance.
My whole life I've been on government healthcare plans, across various countries. Imagine my shock when the first time I called my private health insurance provider at 34, it worked well. They chose the clinic I would go to, when I arrived to my appointment I was immediately ushered in to meet a physician. The physician was able to diagnose many problems within a couple of minutes, and I was asked to call my insurance company back so they could approve a series of tests and treatments.
I waited half an hour for approval and I then immediately saw two different doctors and had an x-ray all before leaving the building.
The clinic is interested in actually treating me and giving me the best care possible so that I don't come back. This ensures they get repeat business from my insurance company. Socialized medicine never gave me that kind of care or expediency in my life. The problems were all fixed.
One of the problems I've had for 10 years. Doctors were never able to diagnose it properly or it was "come back in 2 weeks, try this medicine, try that, etc." They were not interested in treating me they were interested in seeing me again and again because they were getting paid by the state.
I'm sure there are anecdotes to the contrary but I am completely sold on private healthcare. It's also fantastically cheaper. In Germany for example I was paying 800/month for healthcare, half "paid by my employer", which would really be my money. My current private healthcare costs about 380/year.
Diagnosed immediately, immediate care. I can buy as much or as little as I want and don't have to subsidize others. I'm encouraged to stay in shape and healthy.
Good to know, I did not consider that. It doesn't necessarily have to be socialized healthcare for me as long as private healthcare prices and treatments are reasonable.
I suppose we should also balance out how work is structured around those countries. Some governments prefer setting up and staffing their own agency for a given sector or situation rather than going full outsourcing. So people who would be working in the private sector still end up in public jobs even with a socialized healthcare system.
That happens in countries with universal or semi socialized medicine too.
Obviously these are two different things. What I’m saying is whether or not healthcare is private or nationalized, the pharma industry in those countries are not nationalized (like say the way they were in the eastern bloc).
That insurance isn't socialized medicine. In Europe for example, the hospital is owned by the government/state/etc, the doctors are hired directly by the hospital, the medicine costs are directly set by the state and so on.
It's comparable to the USA's freeway system - yes the roads are publicly owned, but road repairs and material procurement are contracted out to private industry, and there's always the possibility of things like a government employee getting a kickback from a construction company for signing off on unnecessary work requests, etc.
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