[mmirate3]

Well that is socialism. (As is our conflation of insurance and charity.) Being a form of price control, it also happens to not work very well.

EDIT: and if anyone can explain why forcing doctors and hospitals to provide their services at a loss, is not socialism, then feel free to reply; as that will be assuredly more enlightening than a simple downvote.

[peteretep]

I didn't downvote you, but I'll take a stab at this!

> Well that is socialism

As indeed is provision of roads, fire trucks, police, military and so on. For some reason, people rarely call those out

> Being a form of price control, it also happens to not work very well

I think there's a strong strong case that it works very well in every rich country, because they're all doing it to some degree?

> forcing doctors and hospitals to provide their services at a loss

This assume they're not currently making super-normal profit, which I'm far from convinced by.

[dennis_jeeves]

>As indeed is provision of roads, fire trucks, police, military and so on. For some reason, people rarely call those out

Personally I would call out. But hey, so what if I did? As you rightly pointed out most people are convinced that they need the govt in their _many_ aspects of their lives. I'm outnumbered by people who think, that they can decide what is good for me as an individual.