This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 7, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. People who

like socialized medicine don't call it that, lest they use a phrase with a talismanic

power to kill various health care reforms.

So is Barack Obama's plan to reshape how Americans get their health care something akin

to socialize medicine?

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute,

says though many critics of Obama's plan have smeared it as socialized medicine

without looking more deeply,

the substance of the charge has merit.

The media have actually been very friendly to the Obama plan, a little too friendly.

Senator McCain and others have accused

Barack Obama of proposing a plan that will put the federal government in charge

of everyone's health care.

And there have been fact checkers in the media, for example, those at fact check.org, which is the University of Pennsylvania, and at the Washington Post fact checker who have said, no, this isn't true because the Obama plan would allow you to keep the private health

insurance that you have right now it's private health insurance so it's not going to be

government run unfortunately that's just wrong just because we call something

nominally private it doesn't mean that it is not government run.

In fact, what Barack Obama would do is he would let the federal government dictate the content and the price of every private health insurance plan in the United States.

Now once the government has those powers there aren't many more decisions for the government left to take away from you.

And most of the other decisions the government already has

taken away. So I've asked reporters, imagine Barack Obama as president proposed that he was going to have the government dictate

the content of every news program in the United States and eliminate half of the existing programs and newspapers that are out there.

...