Obamacare: Quintessential Socialism

by: thomas e. brewton | published: 08 19, 2009

The overriding characteristic of President Obama's National Socialist healthcare is forced equality of consumption, a major step in the direction of egalitarian distribution of income. Emphasis is upon the word forced.

As we see with the widespread town hall protests against the President's proposed National Socialist healthcare proposals, people do not willingly surrender the fruits of many years' labor to the government in the name of an undefined abstraction called the common good. Particularly is this true when it is liberal-progressive bureaucrats who decide arbitrarily what constitutes the common good.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed essay, Martin Feldstein, Harvard economics professor and former chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, sums up Obamacare: it's all about the raw power to decide who gets what treatment, while cramming everyone into identical little boxes in order to eliminate any efforts in the direction of individuality. And the bureaucratic mechanism for eliminating individuality is rationing medical care.

Despite the repeated lies by the President and his spokesmen, as Professor Feldstein writes, the National Socialist healthcare bill passed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clearly contemplates rationing.

Many supporters of Obamacare argue that healthcare already is rationed by money availability, because Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies will pay only certain amounts for care and will refuse to pay for some specialized treatments or prescription drugs. This ignores the obvious fact that individuals are free to make choices to pay for such care themselves and that it was individuals who selected the insurance payment programs they have.

Under Obamacare, all private insurance would eventually be compelled to offer exactly the same scope of insurance as the so-called public option. Everybody will be compelled to have the same coverage program, whether he is old, young, in poor health, or in good health.

The argument that medical care already is rationed also reflects a deep-rooted aspect of the liberal-progressive-socialist paradigm: the idea that individuals possessing more money than others is an inherently unjust social condition.

Michael Walzer's analysis of that paradigm is typical. Professsor Walzer, one of liberal-progressive-socialism's most prominent theorists, is co-editor of Dissent, a leading socialist journal.

Walzer contends that possession of money amounts to power and that such power is both unjust and unjustly used. It enables the rich to purchase every sort of social good. Why should these goods be distributed to people who have a talent for making money? This, he says, is morally implausible and unsatisfying.

Nor would it be better if we gave money to people on the basis of their intelligence, strength, or moral rectitude. There is no single talent or combination of talents that entitles a man to every available social good.

In the socialists' view, all that should count is need. If people need certain things (leaving aside how that need is determined), they should simply be given them, without regard to their ability to pay. This is what is meant, in Professor Walzer's sense, by social justice. Whenever equality in this sense does not exist, we have a kind of tyranny in which the strong, the well-born, and the wealthy get social goods in amounts that have little to do with their personal qualities or needs.

With respect to medical care, Walzer believes that it should be distributed only to those who are sick, without regard to wealth, intelligence, or righteousness. But in America today, it is closely follows the income curve. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," would, however, be a fine slogan for medical care, he says. Taxes paid by all of us should pay doctors and other medical care providers. This, says Professor Walzer, necessitates a national health service of a sort to which Obamacare inevitably leads.

It isn't that every man should get what he deserves, as in the old definition of justice. The new standard is egalitarian, that is, everyone should have free and equal access to all the goods and services produced by our economy.

Liberal-progressive-socialists' goal is to restructure our political system to make a society of equals that is worth having. The starting point must be to end the tyranny of personal wealth.

A good doctor deserves society's praise, according to Professor Walzer, but that is no reason to pay him any more than any other worker. Why should a steelworker have to work much longer than a doctor for the money to have a home or an automobile? There are rewards intrinsic to the doctor's job, like the pleasure of using his specialized knowledge for the common good. That ought to be enough. There is no meritocratic defense for differences in pay.

As liberals like Professor Walzer see things, the rewards of the good life are social goods that the rich have habitually taken for themselves, without regard to any personal merit. They are merely the rewards that the upper classes throughout history have been able to seize and hold for themselves. Affirmative-action quotas are a way of redistributing these rewards by redistributing the social places that conventionally get the rewards. National Socialist healthcare is another.

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  Tracy R

  Whether a democrat or republican you have to see the dangers that are coming. Doctors and and steelworkers are not equal in any society. I am astounded by the ignorance of people today. The grass is not greener on the side as history has taught us. If we Americans don't wake up and see what's happening its going to be to late to change anything. Our nation used to stand for something great and it was honorable in its deeds but we have become our own worst enemy by letting a man who has claimed to be American in the highest place of our government. A man who has shown no patriotism and love for this country. I love the U.S.A. and I hope we see the end game of the political agenda soon.

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Mitt Romney

  Obama sucks (and swallows). F u a$$ hole.

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Barack O

  Dick F. said: Obama sucks d on accident

  I don't agree with you view and you should not be on the internet

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Dick F.

  Obama sucks d on accident

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Barack O

  I love socialism and i soon hope America will become a exact copy of the Soviet Union!!!

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Mark H

  Mike T said: PUTIN IS LIFE

  AGREED!!!

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Mike T

  PUTIN IS LIFE

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Nikki, B

  The ACA is not a form of socialized medicine. In a form of socialized medicine, the providers would be employed by the government and insurance companies would all be run by the government. The healthcare marketplace allows for people to freely choose their Heath care plan.

  
  

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  Gene G.

  I attended UC Berkeley in the 50's and remember the Socialist Worker being hawked by l;efties. It was clearly laughable to the students then and nearly completely ignored by all of my friends. In the sixties, we got the Free Speech Movement, the Sexual Freedom League where parties were free if entrants would disrobe and leave their clothes outside. We all saw it coming.

  
  

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  MIchael Bryson

  As a Democrat I have a feeling Kevin M. is not a Democrat and just saying he is. The ACA is not socialist. All you have to do is actually read the definition of the word and do a cursory study of the history of socialism in Europe to see that the ACA isn't any wear CLOSE to be socialist.

  
  

• Reply to this comment

  Kevin M.

  As a Democrat I agree 110% of everything written. Obama was elected to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while promoting a post neoconservative foreign policy. On the domestic front it was hoped that Wall Street reforms would get rid of crass manipulation of financial markets. I caution my fellow American to keep your grand fathered health plans if you can. I feel the success of Obamacare is less than 50% and when the money runs out those on subsidized plans they will be without any coverage.

  
  

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