Appearing Tuesday evening on MSNBC's "The Ed Show," The Progressive's Executive Editor Ruth Conniff offered a direct response to Sarah Palin's conspiracy theory that Obamacare is a secret plot to push America into full-blown socialized medicine, saying real progressives should work to make her fear a reality.
"The full implementation of Obamacare puts us firmly on the path to the left's desire of a single-payer system of socialized medicine," Palin wrote on Sunday for the tea party blog Breitbart.com. "That was the end game for Obama and the Democrats all along. The end is now in sight for them, and the media doesn't even ask about it."
On the contrary, "Ed Show" guest host Michael Dyson went directly after that very question, putting it to his panel. From the looks of it, Palin clearly was not anticipating the response he got.
"I wish it were a plot to bring about single payer," Conniff said. "But the problem here is the U.S. health care system is very complex and the Affordable Care Act maintains this network of private health care providers. That is much more complicated and much more expensive than if we had a single-payer program, if we had Medicare for all. All this talk about socialism and all these attacks on the idea of universal health care don't line up with where the public really is."
"I think people should still push for national health care," she added. "I think that we should make Sarah Palin right. We should look at our health care system and say, 'You know what? We can do better than this.' And we can even do better than the Affordable Care Act. In those 26 states where Republican governors have decided not to allow a Medicare expansion, where you have 8 million people who are too poor to qualify for the Affordable Care Act and be covered -- they need to push hard, and we need to push hard on their behalf."
This video is from "The Ed Show," aired Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2013.