We already have inexpensive plans to cover medical costs.

Of course, if giving the public more choices for health insurance is socialism, what about MilitaryCare, VAcare, Medicare, Congresscare, TriCare?

Aren't they all socialized medicine?

Shouldn't we eliminate them all - or open them all to all socialists Americans?

Note: the Military and VA health care systems, while being shining examples of truly socialized medicine, do serve special purposes: it would be absurd to open those services to the general public. However, they are examples of highly successful alternatives to our nation's medical status quo.

I don't advocate what is truly socialized medicine.

But it is true that

1. The current privatized system of medical care in our country is failing to deliver as well as it could and should.
   
2. Real socialized medicine actually works well.
3. It is incorrect to claim that anything other than what we already have is socialism - but even if it were socialism, who cares? It works where the current system does not work. Socialized health is better than poor health or deaths (45,000 annually) due to lack of health coverage .
4. Canadians would be buying their medications in the USA, instead of the current opposite.
   

There are many urban legends and anecdotes about people who didn't get proper health care in "socialized" medical care systems. 99.99999% (approximately) of those tales are either exaggerated or completely false.

If our system of privately-dictated health care were the best, and socialized medicine were the worst,

1. people would be flooding across the borders for the sole purpose of getting out of their nations' medical systems and into our system
2. other countries would be scrapping their health care systems and recruiting our insurance companies to go abroad to help improve their countries' medicine
3. we would not rank #37 in the world for successful medical outcomes.

What we do see is the opposite: a growing trend is US citizens - even those with health insurance - going overseas for elective or non-emergency medical procedures. It's called Medical Tourism (that search linked to 26,200,000 web sites).