RRHC you are correct, I am a socialist, and I do not apologize for that. What I do find regretful is your need try to rephrase American Capitalism by saying:
Our money system and the health care and corporate systems are socialistic. They all are in bed with govt and get special privilege from govt.
This is either a misunderstanding of socialism or a prevarication. What prevails today is socialism
only to the extent that the CORPORATE LOSSES ARE SOCIALIZED (passed on to the taxpayer) while the profits are privatized. This is exactly what we saw in the recent financial crisis: After taking excessive profits and bonuses over the past decade, EVEN AS THEIR COMPANIES were going down the tubes, as their losses mounted we were told they were too "too big fail."
This is CORPORATISM where the government and corporations are indistinguishable from each other. The government provides the CAPITAL and the corporations take the profits.
What gets me is the lack of honesty that comes into play when it comes to the government providing services to poor people and minorities...we use the term socialism as code to draw out the ire from people.
The Senate ReAuthorization of the Welfare Bill, according to the CBO cost
11.7 billion dollars annually.
Yet one company, AIG, just got $150 billion dollars from the tax payer, because they were "too big to fail."
Who did it benefit, when the Congress passed a Medicare Drug bill that prohibited HHS from negotiating drug costs with the drug companies? Do you think that was put in there to benefit the taxpayers? No it was put in there to benefit the drug companies at the expense of the taxpayer.
It is time to debunk the myth that "those lazy people don't want to work" and are getting something for nothing. The only people who are getting something for nothing are the rich people who can buy their way into power.
The sooner physicians begin to see themselves as SPECIALIZED WORKERS, and begin to SIDE WITH THE WORKING PEOPLE, whose ranks are being whittled monthly (between CitiGroup and BoA they have announced 100,000 job cuts in the last month), they will soon find themselves unable to work independently and working for wages that do not reflect their years of education...why? Because you will be asked to compete with Doctors in India to read X-Rays, so what if their english is not good?
