In every culture there are certain words that automatically evoke negative images for most members of the society. In our culture, "socialism" is a biggie. You might as well call someone’s mother a whore as call them a socialist. Knowing this full well, a favorite trick of hard core partisans is to label a policy or program as a form of socialism in order to take advantage of our cultural prejudices and color the impressions of moderates who might otherwise have a positive perception of it.
There are many problems with the "socialism" label that has been quite adeptly applied to the health care reform act, which is about to be under renewed attack by Republicans in congress. First, our cultural bias aside, there is nothing inherently good or bad about socialism. It is a perfectly valid approach to some problems, and not so good for others. A great example is the entire concept of insurance, whether health, home, car, or Jennifer Lopez’s butt. At it’s most basic level, any form of insurance is simply a group of people pooling together in order to spread financial losses amongst them rather than absorbing those losses individually. The very definition of socialism, and yet precious few of us ever voluntarily go without some form of insurance or another. Therefore, the health insurance system is a socialist program before, after, or whether government plays a role in it or not. Secandly, the reform bill that was passed is nowhere near the total socialistic government takeover scheme that some have tried, admittedly very succesfully, to scare us with. The plan leaves health insurance policies in the hands of private, for profit insurance companies. It absolutely does not put sensitive issues like Dr choice, treatment options, or frequency of Dr/patient visits (rationing) in the hands of the government. Even if it did, claiming that having a for-profit company in charge of deciding which treatment options you should or should not receive is better than having a government agency in charge of it is pretty suspect, but that is another discussion.
The better approach by far for those opposed to the new law is to focus on the legality of the purchase mandate. There is a very legitimate argument to be made there, and it seems to me that we as a society would be much better served by arguing issues like this on merits such as that, rather than decending into the cheap, easy tactic of fear-mongering.
Reposted from my blog.