[geeks] nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[der Mouse]

> No, it isn't, because that is not what it meant by rationed health
> care.

So, what do _you_ mean by "rationed"?

>> It's just standard supply and demand; in a monetised health-care
>> system you use ability to pay to "ration" limited health-care
>> resources.  In a socialised health care system other means are used
>> to ration limited resources.
> In other words, socialized medicine is rationed, the US system is
> not.

Sounds to me as though you two are arguing over what "rationed" means,
rather than over heatl-care systems per se.

> Both require money so they both have that limit.

They do?  The Canadian one doesn't - at least not in my experience.

> Actually no, it was socialized elements that led to that, namely
> insurance beginning to pay for non-emergencies, which is a form of
> socialized medicine.

It is?  I can't see how, unless the insurance is not allowed to turn
people down or some such.

Insurance is fundamentally a bet with the insurer, with specified rates
and payoff conditions.  I can't see any reason why an insurer making
such a bet involving non-emergency medical payoff conditions deserves
to be called "socialized", unless there is some government mandate
invovled (such as the insurer not being allowed to turn down
applicants).

> Socialized medical care is just as for-profit as the market systems,

I don't think so.  Certainly there can be those who profit, but there
is nothing inherently for-profit about socialized medicine.  At its
purest (which is not to say that it often - or even ever - is done that
way), any "profit" is returned to the public coffers, thus ultimately
reducing the tax burden that society pays for it in the first place.

Most/all of the cases where supposedly-socialized medical systems show
profit effects are the non-socialized portions of mixed systems (such
as Canada's, where some aspects, mostly those seen by the patients, are
socialized, but others, such as most suppliers' sides, aren't).  This
is one of the prices such places pay for having mixed systems.  It's
very difficult (not impossible in theory but probably impossible in
practice) for a completely socialized medical system to exist in a
not-completely-socialized society.  (I'm not aware of any completely
socialized societies with population numbers above the low hundreds, at
least not unelss you count fiction, and speculate that it would take a
substantial change in human nature for any such to exist.)

Like most aspects of the socialist/capitalist/communist dilemma, I'm of
mixed feelings about it.  But I do find that, in my experience, there
is a substantial positive correlation between how socialized a system
is and how much I'd like to live under it - and I say that as someone
who is probably above the wealth median in any of the societies my
experience covers.

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