Ronald Reagan On Socialized Medicine

One of the "positives" about Sen. John McCain is his opposition to the nationalizaton of our healthcare system, some one-seventh of the U. S. economy. In 1993, when Hillary Clinton was promoting her scheme of socialized medicine, McCain and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm toured the nation campaigning against it. One such appearance was at St. Dominic's Hospital here in Jackson.

Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, the year after Lyndon Johnson's landslide presidential election win over Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater. Johnson's Democratic Party had big majorities in both houses of Congress, and these two pieces of legislation were cornerstones of his "Great Society" domestic program.

This year, of course, the Democrats are promising to force every American to carry health insurance. Just think: the whole system would ultimately be like those of Medicare and the Veterans Administration; every hospital in America would be like Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D. C. The same outfit that runs FEMA, the IRS, and the postal "service" would be running the medical care system. I hope our citizens will keep this in mind when they go to the polls in November.

This audio warning against socialized medicine was recorded nearly 50 years ago by Ronald Reagan. This, to be sure, was before he ever ran for public office and prior to the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid. I found his remarks to be prescient.

The article below refers to the compulsory health insurance program in Massachusetts. This program, of course, was championed there by Gov. Mitt Romney, who is now being mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Sen. McCain.

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From The Douglass Report:

It's only May, but the rhetoric of the 2008 Presidential Campaign is already at fever pitch. This November, as in all election years, there are important issues at stake. One of them is the issue of socialized medicine or, to use the Democrats' latest euphemism for it, "universal healthcare." Universal disaster is more like it. The Dems do their best to put a positive, humanitarian spin on the idea, but the long-term ramifications would be devastating.

The Democrats would have you believe that conservatives who are against universal healthcare take this stance because they are mean-spirited and compassionless. Naturally, this isn't the case. And it's hardly how I feel.

I am against universal healthcare because I believe it will create one of the most intrusive government bureaucracies since the Internal Revenue Service, and it will impinge heavily on the individual freedoms of all American citizens.

Both Clinton and Obama would attempt to achieve universal healthcare coverage by relying primarily on private insurance. That's right - they would look to solve our nation's health care problems by giving control of the system to the insurance companies. Wow.

Their plans rely on an "individual mandate" - a legal requirement that every person obtain coverage. This is already law in Massachusetts, which mandates coverage for both adults and children (more on this below). The Massachusetts model is exactly what Hillary Clinton would try to impose nationally. Obama's plan would only require that parents obtain coverage for their children.

One of the key misconceptions among those who support either Clinton or Obama is that a universal healthcare system would make healthcare more affordable. What delusional planet are they from? Under socialized medicine, the healthcare system may be perceived as being more fair, but it certainly won't be any cheaper.

A better way to describe the program would be to call it "universal health insurance." The idea is that by compelling everyone in the nation to participate in the insurance market, you'd cut down on what's known as the "free rider"... Keep reading>>>