http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/09/07/090907taco_talk_lemann <http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/09/07/090907taco_talk_lemann\ >
excerpt </search/query?keyword=Socialism> "One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it." This was Ronald Reagan, in 1961, speaking in opposition to an early version of Medicare, the big federal health-insurance program for senior citizens. An important station on Reagan's road from actor to politiciancoming between the national barnstorming he did as a spokesman for General Electric and his sensational campaign speech for Barry Goldwater, in 1964was the eleven-minute recording from which this quotation comes. It was called "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine," and the American Medical Association distributed it to its members. Reagan believed that government health insurance for senior citizens was a Trojan horse: the real goal was universal health care and then full-on socialism. So it was important to resist sentimental appeals: "Now, the advocates of this bill, when you try to oppose it, challenge you on an emotional basis. They say, `What would you do, throw these poor old people out to die with no medical attention?' That's ridiculous, and, of course, no one has advocated it." Four years later, Congress passed Medicare, the emblematic achievement of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Politics is moved less by new ideas than by the ability of politicians to bend the direction of history, even slightly. Government health care had been a leading item on the liberal agenda at least since Harry Truman first proposed it, in 1946. When Reagan made his recording, the time for federal health care had not yet come; what had changed by 1965 was the martyrdom of John F. Kennedy, which made Congress and the public far more amenable to liberal reforms, and the legislative skill of Lyndon Johnson. The first law putting substantial federal money into needy local schools passed at around the same time, and for the same reasons. So did the first tough civil-rights law since Reconstruction. But health care for all was, even in the heyday of the Great Society, a step too far.
