Conservative media push 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear against health car

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.