Dave, I argue we already have socialized medicine and in fact any reasonable new plan will extract payment from those who are milking the system more fairly.
Imagine: Person A might be a single 40 year old female who only makes $25k this year at Walmart. Ten years ago she may have had a good job with General Motors and have been able to positively pay into the system.
That 40 year old at WalMart has the individual responsibility to better their job situation if they want more... that is not my responsibility, your responsibility, Joe McFucknut in Idaho's responsibility, nor the government's responsibility
And I won't even get into the argument of how a union job like GM has actually hurt hard workers and the consumers in this country...
We do not have socialized medicine, for the most part... and the parts we do have (especially medicaid) needs to be done away with, unless the recipient becomes a ward of the state, deemed completely incapable of taking care of themselves, and losing the rights and privileges that are generally lost when someone is committed
The only fair 'new' system would be zero government contribution or running of it, reduce certain regulations to bring about more competition, and enact proper legislation to fix the true problem areas of denial of coverage, etc.... but no free rides, no added government red tape and bureaucracy, and no government mandates of mandatory insurance