Eisenhower/Nixon: Socialists!

In a 245 to 189 vote on January 19th, the House passed a repeal of the "job-killing" Health Care Reform Act. As the battle continues, Americans are bombarded by the propaganda of the Professional Right Wing as they scream Socialism from every rooftop. But, they forget the roots of the plans that have been proposed and the very people who proposed them.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a National Health Care system.

Eisenhower asked Congress for $25 million to fund what he called health "reinsurance."

Under the Eisenhower plan, private insurance companies who extended benefits to uninsured Americans would be reimbursed by the federal government should they incur excessive loses. In a way, the government was insuring the insurers.

Eisenhower said:

Because the strength of our nation is in its people, their good health is a proper national concern; healthy Americans live more rewarding, more productive and happier lives.

The good health of the people is a proper national concern!

Eisenhower's efforts to insure every America with tax payer money failed, but the standard was not dropped forever. In 1974, President Richard M. Nixon proposed the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan ( CHIP ). It would have allowed for every American to receive health insurance. The plan would have been paid for through a combined effort of the employed, the employer and the government.

Nixon placed health as important as any other factor in an American's ability to chase after the American Dream.

Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.

Both plans fell to the left of the Health Care Reform bill passed by the Obama administration. Both plans called for more government "intervention" than the current law. And yet, the Conservative right still screams about Socialism.


Socialists of the Right

By their own definition, if proposing the Health Care Reform Act shows us that President Obama is a Socialist, as the Right Wing propaganda machine would have us believe, then, by that same logic, both Eisenhower and Nixon were socialists as well.