Your views on socialism are off the mark, in my opinion, but your views about the current medical system, while hyperbolic, point out many real flaws with the system that should be corrected. You talk about the physicians’ monopoly – we’ll I’m against this as well. I’m ready to eliminate the barriers to a true free market and to take the consequences. I believe this physician monopoly may also underlie why you seem to be getting such poor service for your particular pain problem. (That, combined with a DEA that arbitrarily prosecutes physicians for ‘overprescribing narcotics’, the whole war on drugs mentality, and the lack of objective measures of pain).

In my opinion, it should be legal for you to obtain whatever drug someone else wishes to sell you – with the physician acting solely as adviser (not controller) of such drugs (and that, only if you wanted him/her to be involved).

Did you miss the point regarding Robinson Crusoe? It was pointing out the parasitic view of rights inherent in those who speak of a right to health care.

The point is that rights are meant to be freedoms of action, not guarantees of results. You are supposed to have the right to take actions to preserve your life, to get and keep property, to pursue your own happiness. No result is guaranteed. Happiness is not guaranteed. Those who claim the ‘right’ to having health care provided to them (instead of the right simply to pursue their own health care by voluntary trade with others), are actually claiming the right to force others to provide it for them – at the point of a gun if necessary. So in the end, a ‘right’ to have health care provided to you is a fundamental violation of the rights of everyone. It pits man against man in deep conflict. Not exactly leading to the harmony we are all trying to achieve.

Robinson Crusoe has the right to everything that exists on his Island right up to the point some capitalist shows up with “men with guns” to claim “ownership” over his island. Up to then, he can sleep anywhere he wants, eat whatever he picks, and freely use whatever medicinal plants he find on the island. He is subject only to the limits imposed by nature, his own abilities, and the technology he has at hand.

Once the capitalist comes along, Crusoe no longer has any “rights” to anything, but the right to work for the capitalist, who claims ownership over the whole isand and all its resources, including all the fish, coconuts, medicinal plants, and real estate. If Crusoe wants to eat a fish, he has to catch at least 6 more to pay the “owner” for the right. If we wants to sleep, he has to pay rent on whatever place he places his head down. The medicinal plants that grow freely on the island are definitely off-limits, and he will have to pay with his labor for the right to use the plants and be severely restricted in their use, as over-indulgence makes him a less-productive worker bee and the capitalist will not allow this.

So that’s how Crusoe exercises his rights, and how he loses them.

http://www.sinkers.org/posters/capitalismworksbest/capitalismworksbest.jpg

I don’t think many of the people screaming “Socialism!” at any attempts to fix our system would be happy in a true free market capitalist system. Gone would be government subsidies for medical insurance, medical and pharmaceutical research, and medical education, the fruits of which our doctor caste are allowed to sell back to us at monopoly prices. Gone also would be prescriptions, medical licensing and any other government-imposed restrictions of the free exchange of medical products and services which protect the monopoly rents which are the primary drivers of medical cost in this and every other country, including those with “socialized” medical care. Back in the days when there was no evil “socialism,” doctors earned scarcely more money than housepainters and had to hustle their butts from house to house to generate revenue.

As a chronic pain patient, in a true free market system I could pay $10 bucks for an online consultation with a doctor in India and then order my medications without a prescription from wherever for a fraction of the cost I’d pay here, so why the hell would I spend thousands of dollars for abuse, humiliation, ass-covering, scare-mongering and no treatment which is what I get from the capitalist-induced kleptocratic monopoly system in this country?

Suddenly, if you doctors wanted my business, you’d have to actually be competent and treat me with respect. Now, you can be incompetent, indifferent and abusive, because you have me, and millions of other Americans, by the short-rabbits due to your monopoly over medical care and drugs.

So you want free market? Yeah, this anarchist says bring it on, baby. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for, as you may get what you deserve.

i am not saying that i am in favor of a total gov’t run health care but i believe there should be some form of gov mediation. historically, a perfect-market system did not work well for the medical profession and the patients. what individual physician has the time and money to market him/herself? i personally like a system similar to what david goldhill was offering as an idea in his article in atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care.