I'm curious to know when our present day mindset of how the health care system should work actually began. I, like many others here, believe that the field should be competitively priced like any other good or service. Something that usually comes to mind, when these debates go on and on is the simple fact that after thousands upon thousands of years, our existance as a species has continued to thrive without socialized healthcare. It seems that only recently, we have come to believe that it is absolutely necessary for society. So, where did this belief first begin? What sparked it?
I assume you are talking about the US, as Europe has long been in the thrall of socialism. The same reason some people claim the US and global recession is due to laissez faire capitalism. They confuse mercantilism, business subsidies, protectionism and cronyism with free markets and free trade. The same thing goes for the US healthcare system, which is mistakenly characterised (even by some advocates of free market healthcare!) as a free market system, in spite of the huge amount of government regulation and cronyism in the healthcare sector.
Socialists perhaps see that, due to the historical (and horrific) failures of collectivized agriculture in the Soviet Union, Red China and the like, that it would be best to advance their agenda into creating a "right" to another essential good, that of healthcare. People are demanding change because they see that the current US healthcare system isn't working, and the socialists offer their system as an alternative and point to Europe as (supposed) examples of socialized medicine's success.
jmorris84: So, where did this belief first begin? What sparked it?
The progressive movement....
Late 19th or early 20th Century I believe was when the movement for Socialized Health Care began, around the time that behavior control became the prime drive of government law in the United States....
It sounds like the ocean, smells like fresh mountain air, and tastes like the union of peanut butter and chocolate. ~Liberty Student
A bit tangentially, here's two good articles on healthcare:
1.
2.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...