Domestic policy blogger Ezra Klein over at the Washington Post is kind of the blissfully nerdy girl's dream wonk. I've never met the lad, but he seems to adore policy and writes about it in clear, sharp and occasionally self effacing ways. Today, he wrote yet another post I wish I'd written first, where he clarifies the difference between various healthcare terms that get bandied around DC. You can read the full post complete with fun graphs here, but here's the bit that clears up a lot of nonsense about healthcare models:

I've been meaning to write this post for some time. The words "socialized medicine" and "single-payer health care" get thrown around with such gleeful abandon that they've both become a bit unmoored from their actual meanings. In the American health-care debate, they tend to refer to "whatever the Democrats are proposing." But that's not what they mean.

Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the means of providing medicine. Britain is an example of socialized system, as, in America, is the Veterans Health Administration. In a socialized system, the government employs the doctors and nurses, builds and owns the hospitals, and bargains for and purchases the technology. I have literally never heard a proposal for converting America to a socialized system of medicine. And I know a lot of liberals.

Single-payer health care is not socialized medicine. It's a system in which one institution purchases all, or in reality, most, of the care. But the payer does not own the doctors or the hospitals or the nurses or the MRI scanners. Medicare is an example of a mostly single-payer system, as is France. Both of these systems have private insurers to choose from, but the government is the dominant purchaser. (As an aside here, unlike in socialized medicine, "single-payer health care" has nothing in particular to do with the government. The state might be the single payer. But if Aetna managed to wrest 100 percent of the health insurance market, then it would be the single payer. The term refers to market share, not federal control.)

Socialized medicine is far outside any discussion we're having. Single-payer medicine has a genuine constituency but is also a vanishingly unlikely outcome. But the promiscuous use of the terms has created a rather confused population. "Socialized medicine" is the thing we don't have. In some cases, it's the thing we don't like.

Just how tough is Sonia Sotomayor? Holly recently noted an episode from her time as a private attorney when she gave chase to some crooks on a motorcycle through the streets of NYC. Yesterday, we learned that she fractured her ankle at La Guardia Airport before boarding her flight. She was traveling to DC for meetings with Senators and White House officials, and wasn't about to let a little thing like a broken ankle get in her way. Sotomayor boarded the plane regardless, went directly to the Old Executive Building (the office building adjacent to the White House where many senior officials work) upon landing and attended meetings. It was only THEN that she decided that her pained ankle needed some treatment. A White House physician soon sent her to a nearby hospital for x-rays which determined that yes, that throbbing pain in her ankle was actually a fracture. Now, in a substantial cast which has reportedly been signed by a couple of Senators, she's still holding meetings. She'll meet with 8 Senators today, after meeting with 6 yesterday. Anyone who's had or known someone with an ankle fracture is aware just what a physical feat that is.

In  other news, the Associated Press has just reported that the Senate has decided Sotomayor's hearings will commence on July 13. That's just over a month away, so Sotomayor might make history not just as the first Latina SCOTUS nominee, but as the first one to attend her own hearings with her ankle in a cast.