Socialized Medicine

Socialized Medicine is defined as is a term used primarily in the US to refer to certain kinds of tax paid for health care.
Who receives this care? Well in the ideal it would be everyone.

The pro's of this system are argued to be, everyone gets health care, no one has high costs and the quality of health care goes up.

The con's against say that the quality of care actually goes down, there are long lines for Dr's and the system is impersonal as you do not get to choose your GP.

Those that argue for socialized health care say, one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars go to administrative costs.

Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.

Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.

Conversely current regulatory costs are argued to be in the neighborhood of about 25 % which includes regulation of health facilities, health professionals, health insurance, drugs and medical devices, and the medical tort system, including the costs of defensive medicine, or say an annual 335 billion.

Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formula or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.

Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.

The RAND Health Insurance Experiment notes that 31 % of care given to patients for free, is wasted, and access related facilities regulations which cost 11.8 billion, provide benefits of only 3.8 billion.
Also quality related facilities regulations impose about 21.8 billion in costs and tender about 4 billion in benefits.

What does all this mean, probably that there are some other paths we could take to help provide health to everyone other than just paying for it out of the tax payers pocket.

Another dire side effect of the thinking of those that promote free for everyone medicine is rationing of care. We will not be able to provide all services for everyone.

http://www.freemarketcure.com/whatswrongwithushealthcare.php

Professor Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University sees health care swallowing up 28 % of GDP by 2030 (up from 16% now), but asks: What would we rather spend the money on? "SUVs" In contrast, Brookings Institute senior fellow Henry Aaron prescribes a bitter, if sugar-coated, pill: "Intelligent health care rationing - limiting the availability of care that costs society more to produce than it is worth to patients - is not a horror to be avoided. It's a regretfully necessary limit to sustain fair access to health care that is worth what it costs."

The health care industry and the insurance industry are in need of major shake ups beginning with some good old fashion competitiveness coupled with real pricing transparency. We as consumers cannot "shop around" for our health care we must go where we're allowed.
This is a set of chains that need to be removed and then we will probably see the prices of daily health care come down.