Obamacare is the greatest social program this country has seen in 50 years.

[Art_from_Ark]

56. Some student loans are social programs, others are not

The NDSL that I got directly from the government, at a greatly reduced interest rate (or none at all if I paid it off within 9 months after leaving school) definitely was a social program. Student loans that are offered by private banks at nearly usurious rates are not social programs, no matter how they are packaged.

When President Johnson signed the Medicare Bill in 1965, it was designed to provide *government* medical assistance to people who were largely shunned by the private health insurance industry-- that is, mostly people 65 and over. The government played the leading role in managing this system, at least in its infancy. It was never designed to make a profit to placate Wall Street investors. It was a social program in every sense of the word.

Today, government is only playing a subordinate role in ACA and is allowing private, for-profit corporations not only to take the leading role, but to profit handsomely from what should be a non-profit undertaking if it were truly a social program.