By Cliff Kincaid
August 7, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

A new report from researcher Trevor Loudon names one of the main architects of Romneycare in Massachusetts as a member of an international socialist movement. John E. McDonough, a former Ted Kennedy staffer who also played a significant role in passing Obamacare, is identified by Loudon as a former chair of the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a pro-Marxist group that is affiliated with the Socialist International.

McDonough is now a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Loudon is the blogger from New Zealand who broke the stories of Frank Marshall Davis being Obama’s communist mentor, and Van Jones having a communist background after his appointment as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar.”

Loudon’s new report, which is potentially embarrassing to Mitt Romney as he tries to prove his conservative credentials, is headlined, “How DSA Marxists Influenced Health Policies for Both Major Presiden...”

McDonough acknowledged to AIM, “…between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, I was a member of (first), the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and then Democratic Socialists of America as it became in the early 1980s. I left the group in 1982 or 1983. I also served as chair of the Boston chapter for a couple of years.”

In his book, Inside National Health Reform, McDonough writes, “…I participated in the conception, birth, infancy, and toddlerhood of the Massachusetts health reform program, which became law in 2006 with the support of the Republican governor, Mitt Romney…”

“More than any of us imagined at the time,” he went on, “Massachusetts reform became an essential template for federal reform.”

His current bio notes that he “played a key role in passage and implementation of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law” and highlights his academic credentials but makes no mention of his involvement in socialist groups.

Although McDonough told AIM that he left the DSA in the early 1980s, Loudon cites a 2005 issue of “The Yankee Radical,” the newsletter of the DSA chapter in Boston, highlighting McDonough as one of several speakers at a DSA event in that year. It refers to McDonough as a former chair of Boston DSA and advocate of universal health care.

An Obama campaign video, released on the six-year anniversary of Romneycare, identifies McDonough as one of the architects of both the Romney and Obama plans. “I helped craft and pass Massachusetts health reform in 2006 and the Affordable Care Act in 2010,” McDonough says in the video. It makes no mention of his DSA affiliation.

The video was designed to make Romney look foolish for campaigning to repeal a national program modeled after the state plan he signed when he was governor of Massachusetts.

In what is a first for Trevor Loudon, a strong critic of Obama, he posted the Obama campaign video as incriminating evidence of McDonough’s role in both the Obama and Romney health care plans. “I can’t dispute the facts,” Loudon says. “All I’ve added is that he happens to have been a DSA member.”

But that affiliation is a blockbuster. DSA describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. A recent issue of the Boston DSA newsletter hailed the victory of the socialists in France.

In an article in the Spring 2007 issue of DSA’s Democratic Left, National Political Committee member David Green wrote, “Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production.”

Back in 2008 AIM reported extensively on Obama’s own ties to the DSA. And he has not cut those ties. As president, he recently gave a Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta, the honorary chair of DSA.

McDonough’s role in Romneycare is not disputed. “As director of the advocacy group Health Care for All, he played a key role in the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law…” noted CommonWealth magazine.

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute and a co-author of Why ObamaCare Is Wrong for America, agrees that there is no question McDonough played a significant role in the Massachusetts plan.

But Cindy Gillespie, a trusted Romney aide who led his health care reform effort, says Romney had nothing to do with him. She told us that she would have no comment on McDonough’s socialist credentials because he “was not part of Governor Romney’s health care team nor was he ever an advisor to the governor during Massachusetts health care reform.”

It would seem that she was someone in a position to know. Her bio notes that she “served as counselor to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney” and “played a leading role in the development of Massachusetts health insurance reform.”

But her denial only confirms that McDonough exercised his influence through his running of Health Care for All, a liberal or “progressive” organization based in Massachusetts, and connections to Massachusetts Democratic politicians who played a role in shaping the legislation. This included Senator Ted Kennedy, who would later hire McDonough as a “senior advisor” for “national health reform” in 2008, setting the stage for Obamacare.

Kennedy stood by Romney’s side when he signed the legislation in April 2006 and was labeled Romney’s “health care partner” by the media at the time. Romney called Kennedy “my collaborator and friend” and a “parent” of the bill.

Grace-Marie Turner says, “It seems to me the bigger story is that McDonough used his work in Massachusetts as a springboard to Washington where he did have a major role in coordinating the development of the legislation that became Obamacare.”

Until the publication of Loudon’s report, however, McDonough had a reputation as a serious academic and policy analyst. His involvement in the Democratic Socialists of America, a far-left organization which openly and approvingly quotes Karl Marx, puts Obamacare into the context of socialist plans to remake the U.S. economy and reduce the influence of the private sector.

Loudon, who specializes in drawing attention to Marxist infiltration of government and society, doesn’t pull any punches, calling McDonough a “leading Marxist health academic.”

The controversial nature of DSA, however, goes beyond promoting socialism to working with America’s enemies. DSA member Kurt Stand went to prison for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of East Germany and the Soviet Union. Stand had been a left-wing labor activist who had helped fellow DSA member John Sweeney depose Lane Kirkland as head of the AFL-CIO.

Like many socialists, who prefer the label “progressive,” McDonough told AIM that “I have never described myself as a Marxist or even a Socialist,” but that he was and still is “a social democrat in the progressive tradition.”

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