The Galveston County Daily News

Too many people have suggested that Ivana Atkins go back were she came from after reading her guest column “Americans don’t know meaning of socialism” (The Daily News, Oct. 17), so I must come to her defense.

It seems that, for too many people, the very term of “universal health care” is a red flag. I agree with Atkins — these people don’t know anything about socialism.

The premise of her column wasn’t that socialism is better but that those who call Obama a socialist don’t know what they are talking about.

She said: “For someone who lived through socialism, believe me, President Barack Obama is totally American, capitalistic, super progressive and an open-minded dude. Don’t worry. Maybe America is not the best anymore but, with this president, it will be again — but not as a socialist country.”

Having lived in a socialist country, East Germany, for a time, I must agree with her. In fact, many times when I hear or read people spout off about Obama leading us down the socialist path, I shout at the paper or screen: “You guys don’t know what you are talking about.”

Wanting universal health care is not the hallmark of socialism. It was invented long before there was ever a socialist country.

You may remember from your history the Prussian, Otto von Bismarck, also known as the “Iron Chancellor.” He isn’t known for having been socialist or having socialist leanings. Quite the opposite. He is known for forcefully uniting Germany and for his political fights against the German Socialist Party.

Yet Bismarck introduced a universal insurance system to the newly industrialized nations of Europe. He put pressure on the new German Reichstag, and Germany became the first country in the world with a comprehensive insurance system.

It was certainly not because he loved socialism. Far from it. His legislation centered squarely on insurance programs designed to increase productivity, to focus the political attentions of German workers away from the burgeoning Socialist Party and on supporting the German imperial government.

The program included health insurance (1883), accident insurance (workman’s compensation, 1884), disability insurance and an old-age retirement pension (1889), none of which were then already in existence to any great degree.

The German insurance system has been in existence ever since and adopted with variations by all industrialized nations except the United States. It has increased the health of the people in those countries. Workers’ compensation insurance systems have encouraged employers to provide a healthier workplace. Disability and retirement plans have enabled the disabled and retired to be not burdens in poor houses but consumers of the new factories.

One of Henry Ford’s greatest contributions to modern society was not just the assembly line. It was the recognition that he had to pay his workers enough to be able to afford his products. A universal pay raise for workers was not socialism; it was very capitalistic self interest — something today’s corporate CEOs seem to have forgotten — just as universal health care is in our employers’ self interest.

By spreading the risk, their costs go down. Spreading the risk is pure capitalism.

Oktavia Carstarphen is an attorney and lives in Galveston.