Socialized Healthcare would be good for the United States.

Excellent! Unfortunately Pro fails to deliver any argument for "why" we should have socialized healthcare, but rather states that we "should." Pro lists several countries that have social healthcare, but again fails to assert why that is a good thing. For some reason I am reminded of the old adage "if your friends jump off a bridge does it mean you should too?" Pro started off with this round by stating various aspects of our healthcare system that are either not working as efficiently as they should or are costing far too much. Pro implies that looking for the root of the problem is absurd and we should just recogonize that it needs to be fixed. And his solution is socialized healthcare. According to Pro's definition of socialized healthcare, which I am happy to use, though i find it a bit too vague, is as follows. "The provision of medical and hospital care for all by means of public funds". This definition is key to the argument, so lets take a closer look. "The provision of medical and hospital care..." this seems fairly obvious, but again it is vague. I am assuming (something i hate doing) that Pro intends this to mean "all" medical care. Everything from open heart surgery, to dental exams, pharmaceuticals and anything else that could fall under the large umbrella of "medical care". "...for all..." again I am assuming that Pro means every man woman and child in the United States, irregardless of their status as citizens. "...by means of public funds". again I am assuming that pro means that the medical care should be paid for by either of the three governments methods of accruing money. Taxes, issuing debt, or the printing press. If I have misrepresented Pro's definition I apologize. Pro tells us that the system is broken and it needs to be fixed. He is right. Pro tells us that many other countries have adopted socialized healthcare. Again, he is right. Pro tells us the solution is to adopt socialized healthcare like so many other countries. He is profoundly mistaken. Why is Pro so fundamentally mistaken? Because we already have a form of socialized healthcare. What? Bull, you say? The government is currently paying for about half of all healthcare expenses. Half. That is a far, far cry from a free market system, and if it is not a free market system then it is a socialized one. http://en.wikipedia.org... The above is the wikipedia page and below is the source they used for my above statistic. http://content.healthaffairs.org... What spending that is done privately is done through a third party system. Insurance companies. Unfortunately this as well prevents the market forces from working properly. The problem has to do with price signaling. Prices send different signals to different individuals and groups of people. A high price of a product or service tells a consumer that they should think twice before purchasing it and possibly to look elsewhere for something cheaper. A high price lets entrepreneurs know it may be worth investing in. It tells other business owners who use that product or service that they may need to raise their prices or seek out new suppliers. In essence when prices are artificially manipulated by either raising or lowering, they send the wrong signals. How are they artificially manipulated? When you go into your doctor's office or the hospital, you produce your insurance card, and that company pays for the overwhelming bulk of the costs. This prevents the consumer from having any say in the prices as they are not directly paying for it. The same effect happens when the government pays for it. To recap, all of the problems of the healthcare system are not a result of a failure of capitalism or of the free market. It is a failure of the socialist policies that have been adopted that prevent capitalism from working.