“These days, you can hear some people spit out the term ‘socialism’ like it burned their tongues. Meanwhile, they take for granted all the socialist aspects of daily life.” This evident truth was stated and demonstrated in a recent column by Dan Casey, a Roanoke Times columnist.
Casey implicitly defined socialism as a community (or city or state) providing a service to every person, funded by taxes on everyone, and not everyone (the government) owning the means of production.
He pointed out that one of our oldest socialistic projects is the local fire department. “Its costs are spread among all city taxpayers. Although most of their homes never catch fire, they pay the firefighting costs of the ones that do. The crafty socialists didn’t stop there, however. And as a result, all manner of other things became socialized, too.”
He noted that local police departments are, in essence, socialist enterprises. They are funded almost entirely with tax dollars, and they render service regardless of anyone’s ability to pay.
Other such services include garbage collection, public sewers, the local library, the interstate highway system, and education.
“Which brings us to the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a proud socialist, spent the first two months of the primary season as the frontrunner. With the prospect of him as a presidential nominee, right-wing propagandists dug deep into their bags of tricks and began turning “socialism” into one of the dirtiest words in America.”(Casey)
As Casey noted in a subsequent article, many of his readers don’t think of “socialism” as a dirty word. One of these readers noted another example of everyday socialism—agricultural extension agents, even though some of the loudest voices against socialist policies come from farmers and extension agents. This reader asserted that “no other industry has benefited as much as agriculture from our socialist programs which fund teaching, research, and extension for the benefit of our farmers (and the food consuming public).”
One reader wrote that the military is socialism—“our tax dollars at work, for the greater good of society as a whole.”
Casey rightfully included education as a socialistic enterprise. You pay taxes and send your children to the public school free, that is, without additional costs. Yet, when advocates push for a similar situation with health care, they get rebuffed because they are said to be proposing socialism.
It has always puzzled me that our current and historical situation in the United States has us sending our children to school free but having to pay for them to live (if they get sick). It seems that in order of importance, that situation would be reversed.
Problems with our status quo are revealing themselves in our current crisis—the Coronavirus pandemic. I will limit my discussion here to out-of-pocket costs for coronavirus care. Individuals without medical insurance are less likely to seek medical treatment than persons with insurance. Consequently, they were less likely to get tested for the Coronavirus.
That situation was temporarily remedied by Congresswoman Katie Porter, who successfully pressed the CDC chief during a congressional hearing on March 12 to agree that the agency will pay for testing for the Coronavirus.
But the concession by the CDC does not address payment for the treatment of the disease. Recently, a woman without insurance was successfully treated for the Coronavirus and left the hospital with a bill for $34,927.43.
The Kaiser Family Foundation released a study predicting the average cost of treatment for someone with insurance and without health complications would total around $9,763, and treatment for someone with complications could top $20,000. The amount someone with insurance would pay out-of-pocket varies depending on their plan, but the study estimates it could exceed $1,300.
Until treatment is free as well as testing, we have a significant problem. But just saying, this financial issue would not exist in a universal health care system, operating somewhat like our public schools.