privatisation is useful if a problem is too hard... just let the market decide. less so if every aspect of the issue is well known I think...

Privatization is useful if something isn't in the public interest.

Once you accept that socializing police, fire, elementary schools, high schools, power, water, highways, the entire judicial system, and so on is in the public interest -- and medicine for the poor, the old, the imprisoned and in some cases the young -- the question of socializing medicine for everyone is just a question of where you draw the line.

Currently 40% of America is already under socialized medicine. The argument at hand is 40% or 100%. That's all. Not nearly as big an existential question as the politicians may have you believe. The question is "do we double the number of people covered by socialized medicine or not"?

There's a huge difference between shifting the payment risk from private insurers to the government, and real socialized medicine. Under most socialized medicine schemes the majority of healthcare providers become government employees.

Many, but certainly not all. I imagine most people don't really care who the end-employer of medical staff are if they get guaranteed a certain baseline level of care that isn't "go to A&E and pray they fix you up".

That is just question of definition of 'socialized medicine' term. Many universal healthcare systems in Europe are based on public/government insurance, and mixed private and public healthcare providers.

Medicare does it differently.

You qualify for it and then pick a company to administer benefits. Some companies have great benefits for elders, some have great benefits for young people and families with children.

Socialized medicine does not require single payer, for instance look at how Australia manages their system. Single payer is the exception, not the rule.

Note that 'single payer' does not mean 'single provider'. Single payer systems with many public and private providers are common in Europe.

Actually, the irony of this comment is that hard problems usually need a government to solve them.

So sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences -- setting aside my Syria and Yemen portfolio -- then I think those suggestions are terrific. (Laughter and applause.) That's not, by the way, to say that there aren't huge efficiencies and improvements that have to be made.

But the reason I say this is sometimes we get, I think, in the scientific community, the tech community, the entrepreneurial community, the sense of we just have to blow up the system, or create this parallel society and culture because government is inherently wrecked. No, it's not inherently wrecked; it's just government has to care for, for example, veterans who come home. That's not on your balance sheet, that's on our collective balance sheet, because we have a sacred duty to take care of those veterans. And that's hard and it's messy, and we're building up legacy systems that we can't just blow up.

- President Obama