Conservative media push 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear against health care reform
SUMMARY: In discussing health care reform this year, conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear to undermine the efforts of President Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by promoting Ronald Reagan's 1961 attacks on a legislative precursor to Medicare. In light of this trend, Media Matters for America is updating and republishing its March 5 report documenting that health care reform opponents have baselessly smeared at least 16 previous progressive reform proposals as "socialized medicine" over the last 75 years.
"Socialized medicine" smear is false
Progressive reform is not socialized medicine. The Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis that "socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services," and explained that recent progressive health care reform proposals do not "fit this description." The analysis also noted, "Similar rhetoric was used to defeat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s."
Obama has not proposed socialized medicine, single payer, or nationalized health care. As PolitiFact.com noted in a March 5 post, "Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured," and "the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors." And during a March 26 online town hall, Obama explicitly rejected the notion of implementing a health care system "the way European countries do or Canada does," explaining that what "we should do is to build on the [employer-based] system that we have."
Congressional Budget Office: More enrollees in employer-provided insurance under House, Senate legislation than under current law. In both its July 26 analysis of the House tri-committee draft bill and its July 2 preliminary score of the Senate health committee bill, CBO found that more people would be enrolled in employer-based insurance under the bills than under current law in every year CBO examined following the legislation's implementation.
Conservative media predictably cry "socialized medicine" about 2009 reform
Conservatives cite Reagan's anti-"socialized medicine" recording to fearmonger about health reform. On August 14, the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, and O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham featured a recording of Ronald Reagan speaking in 1961 against "socialized medicine" for the American Medical Association's "Operation Coffeecup" campaign. Neither Drudge, nor Limbaugh, nor Ingraham, however, noted that Reagan was speaking out against a legislative precursor to Medicare, which has become very popular since it was enacted 44 years ago, or that Reagan's dire predictions of curtailments of freedom were never realized.
Conservative media figures repeatedly invoke socialism in stating their opposition to health reform. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear or raised the specter of socialism in their discussions of Democratic health care reform proposals. Examples include:
* In a May 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, "Republicans and ObamaCare," editorial board member Kimberley A. Strassel trotted out the falsehood that Obama is on a "drive to socialize health care." [The Wall Street Journal, 5/8/09]
* During the July 18 edition of Fox News' Bulls & Bears, host Brenda Buttner asked if health care proposals take us "one step closer to United Socialist States of America." [Bulls & Bears, 7/18/09]
* During the July 21 edition of Glenn Beck's Fox News program, Beck claimed that health care reform is "good old socialism ... raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor." [Glenn Beck, 7/21/09]
* The July 23 edition of Sean Hannity's Fox News show -- billed as a "Universal Nightmare" special edition -- relied on distortions and falsehoods to raise the specter of "socialized medicine." [Hannity, 7/23/09]
* During the August 17 edition of his Fox News program, Bill O'Reilly claimed that the public option debate is really "about socialism," for which he claimed Howard Dean and Paul Krugman are "poster boys." [The O'Reilly Factor, 8/17/09]
Numerous media figures baselessly link Obama's reform efforts to Canadian, British health care systems. Despite Obama's explicit rejection on March 26 of implementing health care systems like those of Canada or the United Kingdom, media figures have continued to link Democratic reform efforts to such systems. Examples include:
* During the March 26 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity claimed that Obama "wants to lay down $634 billion for nationalized health care. Well, we've had nationalized health care in Great Britain, and we've had it in France, and we've had it -- single-payer in Canada." Interviewing European Parliament member Daniel Hannan, Hannity later asserted, "So your advice to America is stay away from nationalized health care." [Hannity, 3/26/09]
* During the April 24 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, White House correspondent Wendell Goler cropped a comment by Obama and took it out of context -- effectively reversing the statement's meaning -- to falsely suggest that Obama supports creating a health care system "like the European countries." Goler claimed that Obama "doesn't want to do it halfway" on health care and then aired a clip from the March 26 online town hall event of Obama saying, "If you're going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" Following the clip, Goler reported: "His critics worry universal health care would mean government-run health care." In fact, Obama was paraphrasing the question he had just been asked before explaining why he opposed such a system. [Special Report, 4/24/09]
* On the April 27 edition of Special Report, chief political correspondent Carl Cameron falsely suggested that Obama has proposed a nationalized health care system similar to those of the United Kingdom and Canada when he asserted: "The battle is already one of this year's most polarizing and partisan. Conservatives for Patients' Rights launched a new ad with British and Canadian doctors warning Americans about the perils of nationalized health care." [Special Report, 4/27/09]
* In an April 30 Wall Street Journal column, Fox News contributor Karl Rove took Obama's March 26 quote out of context and reversed it's meaning, writing that, in 2008, the Obama campaign "ran ads attacking 'government-run health care' as 'extreme.' Now Mr. Obama is asking, as he did at a townhall meeting last month, 'Why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?' " [Wall Street Journal, 4/30/09]
* On the June 29 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier falsely suggested that Obama has cited Canada's medical system as a "possible model" for his health care reform plan. [Special Report, 6/29/09]
* A July 18 Associated Press article by Charles Babington uncritically repeated the baseless charge that "Obama would push" the United States "into a Canada-like [health care] system." [AP, 7/18/09]
Opponents have used "socialized medicine" smear for 75 years
Smear dates back to 1930s. A Media Matters analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives -- conservatives have attempted to smear those proposals by calling them "socialized medicine" or a step toward that inevitable result. These reform efforts include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act establishing Medicare; President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton's health-care initiative in 1993 and 1994; the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997, as well as its 2007 reauthorization and 2009 expansion; Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's health-care proposals during the 2008 presidential campaign; health information technology provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; and health-care provisions included in President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget blueprint.
Roosevelt's consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill
* A January 3, 1935, New York Times article (purchase required), "Doctors in Debate on Social Medicine," reported that during a "discussion on the socialization of medicine," the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Morris Fishbein, "attacked the general proposal of socialization" and "ridicul[ed] the Roosevelt administration's attempts to evolve a plan of socialized medicine." Fishbein also reportedly said that the "American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American."
* The New York Times reported in a February 16, 1935, article (purchase required), "Doctors Meet on 'Peril' in Security Plans; Illness Insurance Moves Stir Profession," that the AMA called a "special meeting" of its house of delegates due to "what some medical men have pronounced the most critical situation in the history of American medicine, brought about by President Roosevelt's social security program, and particularly by proposals of his advisers for compulsory insurance against the costs of sickness." The Times reported that the AMA asserted that "sickness-insurance plans ... are a step toward socialized medicine."
Truman's health-care reform proposal (the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill)
* The Harry S. Truman Library website states that "Truman's health proposals finally came to Congress in the form of a Social Security expansion bill, co-sponsored in Congress by Democratic senators Robert Wagner (N.Y.) and James Murray (Mont.), along with Representative John Dingell (D.-Mich). For this reason, the bill was known popularly as the W-M-D bill. The American Medical Association (AMA) launched a spirited attack against the bill, capitalizing on fears of Communism in the public mind. The AMA characterized the bill as 'socalized [sic] medicine', and in a forerunner to the rhetoric of the McCarthy era, called Truman White House staffers 'followers of the Moscow party line.' "
* In The Social Transformation of American Medicine, discussing Truman's health-care proposal in Senate hearings, Paul Starr writes: "Senator Murray, the committee chairman, asked that the health bill not be described as socialistic or communistic. Interrupting, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the senior Republican, declared, 'I considered it socialism. It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it.' Taft suggested that compulsory health insurance, like the full employment act, came right out of the Soviet constitution." [Page 283]
* Starr further writes: "In May 1947 Senator Homer Ferguson accused the [Truman] administration of illicitly spending millions 'in behalf of a nationwide program of socialized medicine.' A House subcommittee investigating government propaganda for health insurance concluded that 'known Communists and fellow travelers within Federal agencies are at work diligently with Federal funds in furtherance of the Moscow party line.' " [Page 284]
* Starr also writes that after Truman won re-election in 1948, "the AMA thought armageddon had come. It assessed each of its members an additional $25 just to resist health insurance and hired [public relations firm] Whitaker and Baxter to mount a public relations campaign that cost $1.5 million in 1949, at that time the most expensive lobbying effort in American history. ... 'Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of American life?' asked one pamphlet, and it answered, 'Lenin thought so. He declared: "Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist state." ' (The Library of Congress could not locate this quotation in Lenin's writings.) So successful was the campaign in linking health insurance with socialism that even people who supported Truman's plan identified it as 'socialized medicine,' despite the administration's insistence it was not." [Page 284-285]
* An April 14, 1950, Washington Post article (purchase required), "Dewey Views Truman Plans As Dangerous," reported that New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time Republican presidential nominee, said that the Truman administration's "compulsory health insurance plan" was " 'socialized medicine.' "
Kennedy's health-care reform proposal (the Anderson-King bill)
* In Social Security and Its Enemies: The Case for America's Most Efficient Insurance Program, Max J. Skidmore wrote that an AMA recording by Ronald Reagan, "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine," was part of the organization's "brilliant effort to encourage opponents of the Anderson-King Bill to write to senators and representatives urging that they vote against the proposal." [Page 61] At the end of the recording, Reagan urged listeners to write to their congressional representative because otherwise, "we will awake to find that we have socialism." [Page 165]
* In a February 12, 1961, article (purchase required), "Fight Looms Over Medical Plan," about President John F. Kennedy's call for Congress "to set up a system of health insurance for the aged tied to Social Security," The New York Times reported, "One of the principal opposition arguments is that a Governmental system of health insurance opens the way for a form of socialized medicine."
* A May 13, 1962, New York Times article (purchase required), "Fight Over New Aged Plan Grows Hotter," reported that in opposing the Anderson-King bill, the AMA "had been fighting back with cries of 'socialized medicine.' " The report also stated: "Stepping up its own campaign, the A.M.A. has issued a twelve-page booklet entitled 'The Case Against Socialized Medicine.' "
Johnson's 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act establishing Medicare
* In a January 17, 1966 article (purchase required), "Insurers Ask What's Next in Medicare," The New York Times reported: "This discontent in the wake of the enactment of the Federal medicare program is not over the loss of at least part of the health-insurance business involving people over the age of 64. Rather, the insurance sellers are distressed at the thought that medicare has brought the nation a giant step closer to socialized medicine."
* Reagan delivered an October 27, 1964, speech, "A Time for Choosing," supporting Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater against Johnson, the incumbent. In the speech, Reagan said, "Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business." (The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan; Page 3)
* An August 17, 1992, analysis in the St. Petersburg Times by Ellen Debenport, "Bush resists action, distrusts change," noted that George H.W. Bush "opposed Medicare in 1964 as 'socialized medicine.' "
* In a July 11, 1965, article on the passage of Medicare, "Now Medicare" (purchase required), The New York Times reported that "Medicare bills have been bouncing around Capitol Hill for years, but have run into strong opposition. The American Medical Association has lobbied against a Federal medical program on the ground it would be a step toward socialized medicine."
