Ronald Reagan and Health Care Reform

by Hanna Rosin

Matt Yglesias once pointed out that we already have socialized, single-payer style healthcare. It's called Medicare, and it's one of our most popular social programs. This morning I heard a clip of Ronald Reagan, then candidate for governor, speaking about the prospect of Medicare, and sounding very much like today's town hall critics.

If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free.

And:

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.

Just so you get it, that was almost fifty years ago.