Clinton Denies Support for Socialized Health Care

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Thursday clarified that she does not support "socialized medicine," the Washington Post reports. Clinton was speaking in Las Vegas, Nev., at a forum sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists.

During the forum, an audience member, who declined to identify himself, asked Clinton why she is "still insisting" on the implementation of a system of "socialized medicine" in the U.S. at a time when Canada and Britain have begun "pulling away" from such systems.

Clinton said, "That was a string of misrepresentations about me and about the systems in other countries. Number one, I have never advocated socialized medicine ... that has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years." She added that, "on balance," nations with national health care systems -- such as Australia, Canada and Japan -- provide higher-quality health care than the U.S.

In addition, Clinton asked the audience member whether he considered Medicare "socialized medicine" (Fletcher, "The Trail," Washington Post, 8/10). He indicated that he did, to which she responded, "You are in a small minority of America, because Medicare has literally saved the lives and saved the resources of countless generations of Americans." The audience member later identified himself as Kiara Ashanti, a freelance writer and Republican blogger (Healy, "The Caucus," New York Times, 8/9).