We Need Single Payer: Definitions Dept. 2

Wingnuts are throwing around charges of socialism quite freely these days.

It’s safe to say they pretty much don’t know what “socialism” is, other than a nice scare word. It is “state ownership of the means of production,” that is, of everything. Public health insurance is not “the means of production”; it is health insurance.

Some might argue that the current attempts to bail out Wall Street and GM amount to state ownership; they ignore that those industries ruined themselves (as well as a goodly number of the citizenry), then came begging for help.

They were, in fact, begging for help from us, the taxpayers. It is only right that our help comes with strings attached (frankly, I don’t think enough strings were attached: strings should have included reasonable pay scales; full public disclosure of balance sheets; and, for the zombie banksters, “mark to market,” but that’s just me–for some screwy reason, I like to know where my money is going).

Several days ago, Noz described liberalism as well as anyone I have ever read.

Ownership is not the issue; effectiveness is.

it’s also interesting that while much of the american right subscribes to the cult of private industry, the opposite cult doesn’t really exist on the opposite side of the political spectrum. at least not in any significant way. i personally believe that there are things that government does better than the private sector and things that the private sector does better than government. decided (sic) which is better for a particular problem involves looking at the evidence, how other governments have dealt with it and whether they have been more or less successful. that seems to be how most lefties that i know think. it’s more pragmatism than ideology. no doubt there is someone out there who believes that liberalism means the end of all things private, but whoever they are they are so marginal to debate on any issue they’ll all but invisible.

The only persons who benefit from the current health insurance system in this country are the insurance companies. It is their teat and they suck on it.

What they do to the rest of us just rhymes with suck.