Dave Hornstein takes Martha Gore to task for describing Barack Obama’s health care reform plan as “nationalized health care.” “Let’s get our terminology straight,” Hornstein argues. “Nationalized or socialized medicine is a health care system that is publicly financed and delivered, such as Great Britain’s National Health Service. That is not part of Obama’s proposal or the Single Payer plan.”

Yes, let’s get our terminology straight. Socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs. What matters is who controls the money. Whether we nominally call doctors or hospitals private or public doesn’t matter. If they’re getting most of their checks from the government, that’s who’s in control.

If government controls the resources, it’s socialized medicine. The government can funnel the money through insurers and keep all the doctors and hospitals private and it would still be socialized medicine. If they have the money, they run the show. Everything else is just window dressing.

For more, see here.