I invoke the working class because currently, our health care system IS socialized, just through higher premiums, and this hits working families hardest. Anyone who uses the term "working class" is a communist? No. Let me ask a question, have you ever been accused of wanting to abolish all government just because you want a few things privatized?
We can't just call people communists if they want to redistribute one dollar towards maintaining society. Every society is going to be a hybrid, with some dollars going into the communal pot. A communist is someone who believes all resources beyond basic necessities would be shared and equally allocated...but Marx is a lot deeper than that. His concept of alienation is a criticism of our entire industrial system...and to toss his name around in a debate like this is pointless.
I guess it comes down to a fundamental difference in political belief. I think that left to our own devices, without a government to help us organize and pool our resources, our society would never advance or mature. I think the private sector is very poor at providing health care, and a Canadian/European style system would be an improvement.
In the capitalist model, it is supposed that eventually competition will produce one or two "top" providers of health care. All the HMOs in the country will eventually merge or be purchased, eventually giving us something like the "Walmart" of health care, the single HMO. I would support this scenario because it would be more efficient, but I am worried that a free-market for healthcare won't ever give us something as good as say, the Canadian system. Should we just keep experimenting for the next hundred years with free-market healthcare, constantly with a gigantic pool of uninsured and underinsured families costing the system even more?
I'm just going to point out that you clearly do not understand the capitalist "model." What exists today in the US (or every other "capitalist" country for that matter) is NOT capitalism. In true capitalism, the market sets prices, sets providers, and regulates wages. The government exists to provide defense and enforce contracts legitimately agreed upon by private entities. In a true free market system, there is no pool of anything costing anyone anything, because no on has the ability to cost anyone anything without that cost being agreed upon by the individual bearing it.
What passes for "capitalism" today is actually a very dangerous hybrid of concepts. Government regulation discourages competition and promotes size as a way of compliance with regulation. If you've ever attempted to run a small business, you'll understand. Corporate welfare, as well as private welfare, is in clear violation of true capitalism. The recent US $600 billion bailout is clear and convincing evidence that our government is actively supportinig inefficient business and thus directly competing against other businesses. This is clearly NOT capitalism.
True capitalism does NOT necessarily lead to one or two giants owning the market. Partial socialism leads to that. Even in the current environment however, Walmart is the largest retailer but is CLEARLY not the only retailer. If I want to buy a can of soda, I can get it cheapest at Walmart, most conveniently at the convenience store, most efficiently with my food shopping at the supermarket. I can get it in a cup at a local restaurant. I can get it at the gas station. I can get it almost anywhere. My choices are so boundless, and it is so cheap, that I don't even think about it. Walmart is huge because it is the most efficient at lowering prices. It hasn't killed the other options.
You speak of healthcare as though no one has ever tried it without huge amounts of meddling. This is simply not true. In the US, in the 1960s before the advent of Medicare, healthcare WAS largely a free market enterprise. At the time, it was 6% of GDP, virtually everone had a personal physician, and our life expectancy was on top of the world. The original proponents of Medicare argued not that seniors weren't covered, but that many were covered through charity. Feel free to read all of the news reports from the time about the system hurting the feelings of elderly persons by being "charity cases," and the government deciding to fix it by creating an entitlement. It had nothing to do with lack of coverage. Also, before the regulations and malpractice climate became so stifling, there were numerous charity hospitals and locally funded county hospitals that took all comers, and no EMTALA, universal healthcare, federal payers were necessary.
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