I don't have time to beat around the bush. The health-care plan as proposed by Mrs. Clinton is socialism. There's no soft way to peddle it. There is not other way to describe it.
We have arrived at socialized medicine in America. I do not report this as either a good or bad event but simply as something that has happened with hardly anyone realizing it. This is the first result -- and probably the most important -- of the national health care debate launched last week by President Clinton. Our politics and economy will never again be the same.
[Candidate Bill Clinton's health-care proposal] resembles long-standing plans by congressional Democrats to impose a version of socialized medicine in America.
The heavy hand of government in the activities of Americans When we have a lot of people in Eastern Europe trying to throw off the yoke of central government, now might be the time to ask Americans 'How much government do you want?'
This disturbing trend is nothing short of Europeanization -- a polite term for socialism.
I assure you, Senator Javits and others are dead serious in this frontal assault against our free enterprise system. Make no mistake about it, we are talking survival.
What appears to be simple government planning, to achieve what seem to be worthwhile goals, will absolutely degenerate into total planning. It will encompass production numbers, product design, and ultimately product ownership. And whether you want to call the enemy government planning, or government establishment of goals, there is only one name for it. It is Socialism. If that’s what you want, you have no problem. Just do nothing. And the liberals will elect people to Congress who will give it to you.
A piece of the roof came off with Medicare. Now the whole structure [of American Medicine] is threatened as we knew it would be sooner or later….Some people think that people are entitled to health care as a matter of right, whether they work or not. This is just as absurd as saying that food, clothes, and shelter are a matter of right- one step further than that is a revolutionary system bordering on communism.
Are we stripping our [pesticide] arsenal of essential weapons? If we strip that arsenal, something is bound to happen. I can’t predict what insect, what disease vector, might attack the food supply or health of this country….The consequences of such a situation may go far beyond a mere food shortage….The position of our State Department could be impaired….Our military potential could be seriously affected.
[This bill is] “galloping socialism in one of its purest forms. [It is] “founded on sensationalism and irresponsibility, nurtured on emotionalism and passed…with total disregard of proven medical facts.