Health Care Reform Another Step Toward Socialism? Redistribution of Wealth the Goal of Obamacare

Published: Mon 05 Apr 2010

Mary Banks

Although it hasn't received much notice in the press, prominent proponents of Obamacare have recently spoken more candidly than ever about their reasons for supporting health care reform. Not surprisingly, making health insurance more affordable and accessible wasn't their only motivation, nor was reducing the national debt. In reality, Obamacare was about the redistribution of wealth, a socialist tenet supported by several Obama policies.

On March 25, Democratic Senator Max Baucus called health care reform "an income shift." "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower income, middle income Americans."

In his hesitating, disjointed way, Baucus explained that in the last few years "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind." The new health care law, Baucus claims, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

Remedying Economic Disparities

Around the same time, the former DNC chairman and presidential candidate, Howard Dean, explained that health care reform was necessary to remedy economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top and those at the bottom?" Dean asked during a CNBC appearance. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

Echoing Dean's sentiments in the New York Times, the left-wing economics columnist David Leonhardt referred to Obamacare as "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

The Truth about Health Care Reform Emerges

Finally they admit it. For many health care reform opponents, these comments confirm a sneaking suspicion that for President Obama and Congressional Democrats, the health battle was about much more than insurance-the wealth redistribution piece played a large, if unacknowledged, role in the campaign for national health care.

"I don't think most people, when they think of the health care bill, instantly think it's a vehicle to redistribute wealth," explains pollster Scott Rasmussen. "But we do know that people overwhelmingly believe it will lead to an increase in middle class taxes, and we do know that people are concerned that it will hurt their own quality of care, so I think their gut instincts point in that direction."

By speaking frankly about wealth redistribution, Baucus and other Democrats have veered dramatically from their party-sanctioned script. Democrats understood that they couldn't sell a national health care law to a skeptical country based solely on income inequity. For that reason, they went to great lengths to contend-ridiculously, in the opinion of most Americans-that the legislation could provide coverage to the country's 32 million uninsured while also somehow still saving America money.

After Baucus' comments, a columnist asked an anonymous Democratic strategist if income disparity was one of his aims in endorsing the bill. Never, he replied. "That's what the tax code is for."

"It was not to take something away from rich people, it was to provide something to people without coverage," he explained, differentiating between working for universal coverage and trying to redistribute income. But he soon realized that Democrats touting redistribution could be politically damning, mirroring the controversy that ensued when presidential candidate Obama told Joe the plumber that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

"'Redistribution' is an easy charge to make," the strategist said. "I'm not surprised that it's an argument critics make; what I'm surprised at is that Democrats are making it."

Health Insurance the Privilege of a Few?

This week, the Democratic National Committee group Organizing for America gave a commemorative certificate to those who helped pass the health care reform bill. The certificate read: "We achieved the dreams of generations-high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all."

The "privilege of a few" is an egregious mischaracterization of the state of health care in America. Roughly 85 percent of Americans have health insurance coverage, and the majority of them are also satisfied with it. The claim that health care is the privilege of only a select few is laughable.

Nevertheless, that is the foundational belief of many who supported the health care bill. Given that fact, it's entirely unsurprising that Democrats are describing health care reform as the redistribution of wealth. Interestingly, though, we're only hearing it described that way after the law has passed.