By Peter Barry Chowka

Exclusive to The Hagmann Report. Proponents of government-run health care – whether it’s Medicare, Obamacare, or full-bore socialist single-payer – insist that it will improve Americans’ health and lower the costs. It is also claimed that right now there is no alternative other than moving the country in the extreme leftward direction toward a more socialist medical system. Meanwhile, socialist medicine has failed everywhere that it’s been tried – including right here in the U.S. since the imposition of socialist-light Obamacare in 2010.

Now there is evidence – a smoking gun, in effect – that confirms the true intent of the wonks, the bureaucrats, the globalists, and the Deep State actors behind government-run health care: Its purpose is not to provide effective health care at all but to exert total control over the population.

On March 21, 2010, the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare – a true abomination that transformed the entire U.S. health care system – was successfully rammed through the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress on a narrow, straight party line vote. The Obamacare law was 2,300 pages long and the Obama administration subsequently issued over 20,000 pages of additional regulations associated with it. For the first time in history, using the IRS as the enforcer, the law mandated that all Americans must purchase an expensive government-approved conventional health insurance plan – whether they wanted to or not. This onerous requirement is known as the “individual mandate.” An annual penalty or tax was part of Obamacare. If you didn’t purchase the mandated insurance, you had to pay an increasing percentage of your income to the IRS which was given new enforcement powers and 17,000 new agents to enforce compliance under the new law.

The predictable results of this draconian law were that the cost of health insurance premiums for the middle class rose precipitously and millions of Americans lost their doctors and their favorite health care plans, notwithstanding the oft-repeated bald faced lies by Obama that “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” and “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact chose Obama’s lies about Obamacare as its “lie of the year” in 2013.

Since 2010, the forces of the Shadow Government and the Medical-Industrial complex, with the connivance of the mainstream media, have been able to successfully spin Obamacare as a great benefit that should be kept and not repealed. Widespread initial opposition to the law – which helped to give birth to the Tea Party – by 2017 was replaced by majority support for it, according to public opinion polls.

The Smoking Gun

There have been clear indications along the way that Obamacare was sold to the American people under false pretenses. For example, one of its leading architects, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, was outed when a recording emerged of him admitting to an audience in 2014 that Democrats relied on “the stupidity of the American voter” for Obamacare to become law.

The real smoking gun confirming unequivocally the insidious intentions of the people behind Obamacare came on Monday morning, March 22, 2010. The day before, Obamacare passed the Congress in a party line vote and on March 23 it was signed into law in a triumphant ceremony at the White House by President Barack Hussein Obama. On that Monday morning, John Dingell, the senior Democrat member of the House of Representatives who represented a district in southeast Michigan that included parts of Detroit, appeared by telephone on a local Detroit talk radio program, The Paul W. Smith Show on WJR AM.

Dingell had supported single-payer, government-run socialist health care since he entered the Congress in 1955. His father, John Dingell, Sr., who spent 22 years representing the same district in Congress before Dingell, Jr., was also a supporter of socialized medicine. (After Dingell, Jr. retired in 2015 at age 88, his second wife Debbie, 28 years his junior, stood for election to succeed her husband and won. She continues to represent the district and, her health permitting, will likely hold the seat for the next two or three decades. The three Dingells – John, Sr., John, Jr., and Debbie – have continuously represented the same Congressional district in Michigan without a break for the past 85 years!)

In 2010, John Dingell, Jr. was given credit by his Democrat colleagues for helping to push the Obamacare legislation through the Congress. Obama gifted Dingell with one of the pens that he used to sign the Affordable Care Act into law. Speaking on the radio in Detroit, exulting in his and the Democrats’ victory on the morning after the close legislative win, this is what John Dingell said:

Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of the lack of government-run universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

“To control the people.” There it was. Finally. In plain, simple English. Unequivocal and clear as a bell.

When American Thinker published my short article on March 24, 2010 about what Dingell had said two days earlier – bringing an obscure local radio interview that would otherwise have been overlooked into the light of day for all to see and hear – it was picked up by a wide variety of media, including HotAir, where Ed Morrissey wondered if Dingell had uttered “the mother of all Freudian slips.” Michelle Malkin included reference to Dingell’s comments in an article on March 24, 2010 at her Web site. The story also made its way to the Gateway Pundit, RedState, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, the Washington Times, and Fox News. The most extensive analysis of what Dingell said including its context and ramifications was published at CentristNet. All of these outlets credited American Thinker and me for unearthing the nugget about “control” spoken by Dingell. Discussion of Dingell’s “control the people” admission also occurred on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and Bill O’Reilly’s prime time Fox News cable TV program.

Dinegll’s office was quick to issue a response. On March 24, 2010, an official statement was posted on Dingell’s government Web site, titled “Dingell Statement Clarifying Comments on Paul W. Smith Show – Right-Wing Blogs [sic] Attempt to Smear Congressman’s Words About Oversight of Insurance Companies Appalling Rescission Practices.”

Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15), made the following statement this morning to clarify a comment he made yesterday [March 22, 2017] on WJR 760AM in Detroit on the Paul W. Smith Show, a comment which is now being distorted by right-wing blogs for political purposes.

“Right-wing bloggers are attempting to take my words out-of-context in another pathetic attempt to destroy the historic step taken yesterday for our country.   During an interview on Paul W. Smith’s show, I said:

‘The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.’

“If one were to listen to the entire interview, and not just a clip creatively chopped up for political gain, it is obvious that by ‘people’ I was referring to the insurance companies who we must do a better job of overseeing.  Specifically, we are going to end the deplorable practices of those who rescind the health insurance policies of people on gurneys heading into emergency rooms.”

The problem with the pathetic spin put out by Dingell’s office is that the interview was not “chopped up” (edited). The essential section of the Q & A was excerpted and transcribed accurately without any editing. Dingell’s entire 12-minute and 22-second-long March 22, 2010 appearance on Paul W. Smith’s WJR program – completely unedited – can be streamed or downloaded from this page. The listener can judge for himself what Dingell said and what he meant.

The failure in 2017 of the Republicans in Congress to repeal Obamacare, in particular the individual mandate, coupled with the increasing approval of Obamacare and support for – gasp – single-payer, are not promising signs. However, early versions of the tax reform legislation being considered in the Congress (early December 2017) include a provision to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate.

This is my sixth article in an ongoing series for The Hagmann Report about health care. Below are links to the previous five (and one article from July 2017 at American Thinker).

Single-Payer Medicine is Communism Wearing a Mask of Deceit – Classic Interview with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez  November 26, 2017

It Was 40 Years Ago When My Suspicions About Fake News Were Confirmed (As I was Reporting From Washington, D.C. on the War on Cancer)  November 15, 2017

Majority of American MDs want to work as salaried employees or wage slaves  October 9, 2017

Dr. Linus Pauling and Vitamin C: Meetings With Remarkable Men  July 22, 2017

Baby Charlie Gard: It Can’t Happen Here – or Can It?  July 20, 2017 at American Thinker

Single-Payer Health Care Will Destroy Your Freedom and Kill You  July 13, 2017

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, health care, media, and popular culture. Between 1992-’94 he served as an advisor to the National Institutes of Health. Follow Peter on Twitter @pchowka.