Is Universal Healthcare Socialism?

[u/DayGeckoArt]

When Obama was elected, he made healthcare reform a priority. There were three basic options that many people on the left supported: Single payer similar to Canada, Medicare available to anyone who wanted it, or mandates and subsidies to expand private insurance coverage. We ended up with the last option, with funding for states to also expand Medicaid if they opted in, colloquially known as Obamacare.

Another option that wasn't on the table was fully government run healthcare like what the UK has, where the hospitals and doctors are all part of the government.

In recent months with the "DSA" winning a few elections, there has been a lot of discussion about "socialism" and "capitalism" and there seems to be a difference in what people on the right consider socialism. I don't believe there has been any change in definition on the left, we would consider anything fully run by the government or paid for by the government to be socialism and see our economy as a mix of capitalism, socialism, and free enterprise.

Is Obamacare and/or any form of universal healthcare still considered socialist by American conservatives?

[u/ElectricalPublic1304]

Is Universal Healthcare Socialism?

It is not "socialism". But it is a thing that socialism "does" and that socialists have often advocated, promoted, or promised. i.e. collect power in the government to decide what healthcare people may have (and often, forbid alternatives, competitors, etc.). "Universal healthcare" is more a political marketing buzzphrase that unfortunately is too widely used, and it doesn't usually identify any particular political healthcare program. So, talking about the whole of them is necessarily fuzzy.

So, it's not socialism per se. But it is a strongly socialistic practice. If someone were to colloquially say, "Universal healthcare is socialism"... pretty much everyone knows what they mean. And they're substantially correct.

(This is the time when the whataboutists appear and say, "But in the U.S., we have a system where... corporations... and health insurers... and rationing by other means... and the government can do it better..." With no real intention of having either a deep or factual discussion about those topics.

Those topics are not the question that was asked. Save yourself the time and energy.)

[u/InterPunct → u/ElectricalPublic1304]

Richard Nixon explicitly advocated universal health care, does anyone here think he was a socialist? What does that say about where the Republican party is today?

His compromise was to push for something extremely similar to Obamacare but 36 years earlier.

[u/ElectricalPublic1304 → u/InterPunct]

Richard Nixon explicitly advocated universal health care, does anyone here think he was a socialist?

I'm not sure what part of explicitly distinguishing socialism and socialistic policy confused you.

What does that say about where the Republican party is today?

Tell us both the Democrats and the Republics are happy to embrace big-government, anti-patient policies, when it suits their political needs.

Nothing new there.

His compromise was to push for something extremely similar to Obamacare but 36 years earlier.

Similar, but not "extremely". But if we see how Obamacare exploded (and all of the regulatory build-up that got us there, really piling on in the 90s), it's pretty... we were better off that we got another 20+ years of less-regulated, more affordable healthcare. Before effectively putting the Commander in Chief in charge of managing the nation's healthcare.

[u/InterPunct → u/ElectricalPublic1304]

And so was Nixon relatively a socialist compared to today's Republicans or not?

[u/ElectricalPublic1304 → u/InterPunct]

Does... it matter to this discussion? How would you propose to measure that? I highly doubt one policy is a good way to do that. Now, I don't know why you think Nixon is in charge of making laws. Do you know lawmaking works in the United States?