In socialized medicine systems, hospitals are owned by the government and doctors are salaried public employees. Although socialized medicine has worked well for our Veterans Administration, and for countries that have single-payer “national health services” like England, Sweden and Spain, that way of organizing care is not the same as what we are talking about here.

Canada is often cited as an example of a country with single-payer health insurance. Canada’s federal and provincial governments handle the system’s financing, but care is delivered mainly through doctors in private practice and privately owned hospitals.

In many ways our traditional Medicare program, which is a form of social insurance, bears a resemblance to single-payer national health insurance.