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It actually isn't really at all. The problem is that most Americans don't really understand what Socialism really is, and some unscrupulous politicians and pundits play off that ignorance. So you have Americans who believe that when the government does almost anything, that is "socialism".

"Obamacare" is largely based on an idea created by conservatives in the early 1990's as a reaction to President Bill Clinton's attempt to reform the health care industry, which was derisively called "Hillarycare" (see the pattern?) by its opponents- Hillary Clinton was the chairwoman of the commission that came up with Clinton's plan. Clinton's plan was eventually discarded and never made it to be voted on in Congress due to fierce opposition from Republicans.

The basis of that conservative counter-plan was an "individual mandate"- the idea that if everyone has insurance and is paying into insurance plans, the insurance companies will have more money for covering health costs, which should then cause prices to drop. In 1996, Republican Senator Bob Dole ran for president endorsing this plan, and Mitt Romney (also a Republican), as governor of Massachusetts in the early 2000's, implemented a similar law in that state.

When Barack Obama became President in 2009, he initially had intended to set up a "public option" system, which was also the basis of "Hillarycare". Long story short, a public option system sets up a non-profit, government-run health insurance company that competes with private insurers in an attempt to use market forces to cause prices to lower. However, Obama and other Democrats realized that Republicans would never support it; not only that, but "Blue Dogs" (a somewhat pejorative nickname for Congressional Democrats who often vote like Republicans) would also oppose it.

So he instead came up with the ACA (or "Obamacare"), which was largely based upon the old conservative individual mandate idea. Not only that, but it sets up marketplaces for people to shop for insurance from normal, private insurance companies. It does do other things, like set up rules to prevent insurance companies from doing some shady stuff, and so forth. But the core of the law is the mandate and marketplace.

However, Republicans still refused to support the law, even though it was originally their idea. I won't get into the reasons why in this answer, you can find those elsewhere. Not a single Republican voted in favor of it, but enough Democrats (including most Blue Dogs) voted in favor of the law to get it passed by Congress, and Obama signed it into law in March of 2010.

An actual socialist-style plan would be "single payer", which is what is used in most advanced countries in the world (even countries that aren't really "socialist", like Canada, UK and Germany). What happens here is the government uses tax money to pay for everyone's medical bills, rather than private insurance companies doing so. In most cases, people can buy supplemental insurance to help pay foir any copays, prescriptions, etc. Obamacare is in no way, shape or form a "single payer" system.

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11y ago

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