Hybrid Vigor?

At the heart of the health care debate is a conflict that defined much of the 20th century - capitalism vs. socialism. Free market advocates have been pushing for increasing privatization while many in public health sectors are pushing for a single-payer nationalized system. Sadly, these discussions devolve into alternate screaming of "Evil Socialist" and "Evil Capitalist" which obviously accomplishes nothing but to raise collective blood pressure.

I personally believe that this is a false ideologic argument. Pure socialist and pure free market systems never existed, and neither are functional in our highly economically stratified culture anyway. Just as humans have both individual and social aspects to their identities (and flounder if either is ignored), our systems must have public and private components. This is especially true when considering how to provide health care to a population. A good article covering some of the complexities of private vs public health care can be found here:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/what-is-socialized-medicine-a-taxonomy-of-health-care-systems/

A purely socialized system would mean that taxes are paid to the government and the government administers all forms of health care delivery without other options. Purely privatized systems would have for-profit entities providing care to those who were able to pay the market determined price and those who couldn't would simply go without. No one is seriously proposing either. We're going to have a hybrid system. Get over it.

Now hybrid systems can be good and bad, but when we get together to hammer out the details that will make the system work, rather than yelling at each other about ideology, we might actually get something accomplished. That's where I'm going next.