"What do you mean by Socialized medicine or Healthcare ?"

Since many IMGs wrote about being asked this question on the Residency interviews in primary care specialties Family Medicine and Internal medicine, it is apt to discuss this here. Besides its good for IMGs to know what mess are they getting into ;-) LOL


Keeping it short, Socialized Medicine is government-funded health coverage, with the funds derived mostly from taxes and all people have financial access to the doctors and health services. Examples of such systems are UK

The Health system in the United States has been a combination of social and capitalistic elements. Medicare and Medicaid form the socialistic component - while Employer-provided health insurance coverage and self-paid coverage forms the capitalistic element, if you will, since it depends on people's ability to pay.

Medicare coverage starts for citizens only after age 65 - while Medicaid covers the poor and qualifying children. And for the rest of the people, if the employer does not cover health insurance, people need to pay out of their own pockets - which is not affordable to many. As of 2007, America has about 47 Million people that are uninsured, either due to unaffordability or by choice. Employers are slowly starting to drop coverages too - you will begin to understand why when you read about how General Motors lamented that it spends about $1525 on health insurance per vehicle produced in comparison to $201 that Japanese Toyota does. Phew ! and its another story than Japan tops the list of the most long-lived people.


"Socialized Medicine" or the more preferred term "Universal Health care" has recently been in the spotlight due to the problem of the uninsured in America. Let see why the problem of uninsured Americans is bad

So why is having uninsured Americans a problem ? : Because of these options they have to act on:

1. Get bankrupt when a medical condition wipes out all savings (Medical bills can mount to $200,000 in heart surgeries!)
2. Do not see physicians for problems at all, allow problems to reach a complexity that's more expensive to treat.
3. Use unproven, risky off-the-shelf cheaper alternative medicines
4. Fly overseas to India, Thailand - i.e.medical tourism
5. or worse - simply pile up on Emergency centers of hospitals to take unfair advantage of the EMTALA act, which says hospitals are required to cover basic treatment for any person wanting care, irrespective of their ability to pay
6. As the number of uninsured increase, the insured Americans have to pay a greater premium to generate the big pot of insurance money. "The healthy discount the sick"


A huge section of the American population now believes a lot of these problems can be solved if health insurance coverage was made compulsary, private health insurance was dissolved and the government covered everyone through taxes, which will bring down premium rates and and make health care cheaper. [As fo 2007, America speands more than 18% of GDP of Health care !!]

But given the shocking profits that private health insurance plans make and the 10-20 Million Dollar salaries that insurance CEOs make, it's gonna be tough to break their heavily-funded political lobby and replace them by a socialistic model.



Hope this gives all of you guys enough food for thought and good arguments to put forth, when asked that question on the residency interviews :-)



Comments - Critiques - Stones Welcome ;-)





It now remains to be seen how a socialistic concept can emerge in a mostly capitalistic society that America is !






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