Is Obamacare a Socialist Law? – DEBATED
PRO (yes)
Pro
Sean Hannity, host of Fox News Channel’s Hannity show, stated the following during a Mar. 25, 2010 interview with CNSnews, “Sean Hannity: ‘If You Look Up the Dictionary Definition of Socialism, This Is It,'” available at the CNS News website:
“Obama is a socialist. If you take over banks, if you take over car companies, if you take over financial institutions, the way that he has – now the health care system. If you’re going to use every crooked deal that you can come up with to get a bill like that passed – most recently the health care bill – that is by definition, if you look up the dictionary definition of socialism, this is it.”
Pro
Bill O’Reilly, MA, MPA, Host of The O’Reilly Factor, was quoted as stating the following in a July 23, 2014 article “O’Reilly: The ObamaCare Battle Is ‘Capitalism vs. Socialism,'” available at the Fox News Insider website:
“President Obama and the Democratic Party want to put as much money into the hands of the poor and less affluent as they can, and health care subsidies are a great way to do just that… ObamaCare is about much more than providing medical assets to the poor… It’s about capitalism vs. socialism.”
Pro
Newt Gingrich, PhD, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, stated the following during a May 24, 2010 interview with Tom Schaller titled “Gingrich Slams Paulson, Obama, Sarbanes-Oxley and Even W (a little),” available at the Five Thirty Eight website:
“Obama is committed to socialism. I mean socialism in the broad sense. I’m not talking about a particular platform adopted by the International Socialist Movement in the late 19th century. I’m talking about a government-dominated, bureaucratically-controlled, politician-dictated way of life. Not only have we taken over GM, Chrysler and AIG, but there’s a czar in the White House who believes he can establish the pay scale for 30 companies he’s never been in, for hundreds of people he’s never met. They just nationalized the student loan program. They designed Obamacare so there’s a backdoor road to socialized medicine because it creates an incentive for companies to drop their employees. There’s evidence that hundreds of companies may drop millions of employees from their health insurance and have them go buy individual insurance. So there are a lot of different practices that would lead us to believe this is a socialist operation.”
Pro
Michele Bachmann, JD, LLM, US Representative (R-MN), stated the following during her June 14, 2010 speech at the Luce Policy Institute “2010 Conservative Leadership Seminar,” available at the C-SPAN Archives website:
“[S]ocialized medicine, or the government takeover of healthcare, really is the lynchpin of socialism in any nation, that’s what the threat of Obamacare is for America, because it completely re-tools the way we do business in this country.”
Pro
Louie Gohmert, JD, US Representative (R-TX), was quoted as stating the following in a Mar. 27, 2012 article “Obamacare Is Socialism: Reps. Louie Gohmert, Steve King Attack,” available at the Huffington Post website:
“How much more socialist can you get than a government telling everybody what they can do, what they can’t do, how they can live…
In order to make Obamacare to work, the IPAB [Independent Payment Advisory Board] must look and say, ‘This costs so much, this costs so much. This works over here and will save a lot of people, but this one will save more. So since we’re the government and we bought into the socialist notion that the greatest good for the greatest number of people reigns — no longer individual liberty reigns — therefore we’ve got to let these people die and these people live.'”
Pro
Steve King, US Representative (R-IA), in a Mar. 27, 2012 Huffington Post interview, “Obamacare Is Socialism: Reps. Louie Gohmert, Steve King Attack,” available at the Huffington Post website, stated:
“Just think of this: Is it socialism to nationalize a company? Is it socialism to take over banks, insurance companies, car companies? Is that socialism? The socialists say it is… It’s control of the means of production… Owning the means of production is Marxism. Controlling the means of production is more in the realm of socialism.”
CON (no)
Con
Quentin Young, MD, National Coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), stated the following in an Aug. 11, 2010 email to ProCon.org:
“No, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is not ‘socialized medicine’ or a ‘government takeover’ of U.S. health care. Quite the contrary: the new legislation enhances the central role of private, for-profit corporations in our health system.
In fact, by forcing thousands of businesses and millions of individuals to buy health insurance from private corporations, and by subsidizing the purchase of this (often shoddy and inadequate) coverage, the new law is throwing an economic lifeline to a decidedly market-based model of financing care – one that puts profit maximization above the nation’s health.
The new legislation was decisively shaped by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. These firms lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on Congress in the form of lobbying and campaign contributions over the past several years to make sure their profit-making enterprises were protected under any reform.”
Con
Martin J. Keenan, JD, practicing attorney, stated the following in his Mar. 23, 2010 article “Health Care Bill Is Not Socialism,” available at the Kansas Free Press website:
“[I]n Socialism, the government owns the company providing the goods or services and also controls the company. Nothing in the health care bill is Socialism, as defined by Webster.
In a socialistic medical system, the government would nationalize the entire industry. All hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities would be owned by the government. Also, all the employees (including the doctors) would be government employees…
Obama’s health care plan is not Socialism, because Socialism is when the government owns and controls the hospitals and hires the doctors and nurses. Obama’s plan keeps our current private sector system, but makes it more accessible.”
Con
Milos Forman, Academy Award-winning Director for the films One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, wrote in his July 10, 2012 article “Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close,” available at the New York Times website:
“I hear the word ‘socialist’ being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, ‘Obamacare is socialism!’ They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism…
Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation.”
Con
Mormons for Obama stated in their Sep. 1, 2012 article “Myth Romney and the Real Truth About Obamacare,” available at its website:
“Myth 4: Obamacare is a socialist program. (FALSE)
Reality: Socialism is a system under which the government directly runs a nation’s industries. Under this standard, New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority could, arguably, be considered socialist. After all, they represented instances in which the government directly employed people to build and administer power plants and other public works that generated income. Obamacare, on the other hand, will work through private companies. Rather than directly providing health insurance, either through a national program or through some sort of public option, the government will require that people deal with private insurers. Far from competing with private industry, the health care law will likely give it a lot of new customers.”
