Kupat Cholim is Israel's health fund. The original and once largest Kupat Cholim called Klalit used to serve the population with a haughty air of diffidence. At a certain point people started leaving that Kupat Cholim and joining one of the many others that sprang up and as a result Kupat Cholim was going broke. The government's solution was to nationalize payments to Kupat Cholim, thereby saving their national Kupat Cholim and spreading the wealth to the other Kupot.
This did not lower the rates, of course. Once nationalized the rates were only a little bit higher, but the services offered were lower. As a result each Kupah (short for Kupat Cholim) began to offer supplementary services for a fee.
The bottom line is that after Kupat Cholim was nationalized everybody pays more.
But that's not the important thing. The important thing was the government's own Kupat Cholim, Klalit, was saved from going broke. Perhaps nothing else really matters in this case.
Kupat Cholim handles the entire family from before the age that a child goes to school through his life cycle. Before that time a child is cared for by Tipat Chalav another institution which is the butt of many well-justified jokes.
Gone are the lines at Kupat Cholim. Now people make appointments and in these modern times you can even make an appointment for many doctors via the Internet. It is a well organized system that serves the masses well, although in true socialist tradition those who want better health care can ignore the usual health plans and go on to some more expensive plans so that in order to visit your choice of better physicians.
Similarly, hospital care is free in most cases, but those who want to speed up their medical care or medical operations can do so for a fee.
Thus, Israel is a socialist state for those who like socialism but for those who like service, those who can afford it can certainly apply for and receive the much better level of service. Indeed, for those who pay enough the specialized health plans will even cover certain operations abroad.
Thus, socialized medicine lives in Israel - together with specialized health care for the rich.
And this doesn't really seem to bother the thinkers in either camp.
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